Katharina Morin

I strive to create an atmosphere in which the musicians feel valued and inspired to give their best.
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by Alice Lechner

INTRODUCTION

Rising German conductor Katharina Morin, née Poppe, has already appeared in top concert halls including the Philharmonie de Paris and Elbphilharmonie Hamburg. Winner of the 2024 LA MAESTRA Competition and Deutscher Preis für Chordirigieren, she will debut with major orchestras in 2025/26 and join the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe as assistant to the General Music Director. In this interview, she talks about her journey as a conductor, her approach to orchestral and choral music, and her plans for the upcoming season.

 
 

BIOGRAPHY

Katharina Morin, née Poppe, is a German orchestra and choir conductor based in Munich. The young conductor has already made her debut in renowned concert halls such as the Philharmonie de Paris and the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, and has performed with esteemed orchestras including the Orchestre National Avignon Provence, the Orquestra Gulbenkian Lisbon, the Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música, the Orquestra Simfònica de les Illes Balears, Ensemble Reflektor, the Orchestre Symphonique de Mulhouse, and the Opéra Orchestre National Montpellier.

In the 2025/2026 season, she will debut with the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie Herford, the Philharmonie Südwestfalen, the Orquesta de Córdoba, the Orchestre Pasdeloup, the MDR-Chor, and the RIAS Kammerchor. Furthermore, she will join the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe as permanent assistant to the General Music Director with conducting duties, leading performances of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet and Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, among others.

Katharina Morin won third prize and the Génération Opéra prize in the International Conducting Competition LA MAESTRA 2024. In October 2024, she was awarded the Deutscher Preis für Chordirigieren, featuring the RIAS Kammerchor.

Morin was a scholarship holder and assistant conductor to GMD Daniel Huppert with the Bergische Symphoniker in the 2023/2024 season. She has also been awarded the prestigious German Forum Dirigieren scholarship, becoming the only student to receive it for both orchestra and choir conducting. In Forum Dirigieren masterclasses, she received valuable guidance from Peter Dijkstra, Florian Helgath, and Nicolas Fink, and has worked with the renowned WDR Rundfunkchor, Chorwerk Ruhr, Philharmonischer Chor Berlin, and the Stuttgart Opera Choir.

Her important collaborations include assisting Robin Ticciati with the Orchestre de Paris and GMD Georg Fritzsch at the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe in a new production of Richard Strauss' Rosenkavalier. Earlier assistantships took her to the Deutsche Oper Berlin (2023) and the Staatstheater Darmstadt (2022).

Katharina Morin grew up in a musical family and began cello lessons at the age of eight. She discovered her love for symphonic music in her youth while playing in various youth orchestras.

After completing her music studies with the aim of becoming a high school teacher, she pursued choral conducting studies at the Munich University of Music and Theater (HMT) with Andreas Herrmann and Michael Gläser. She then obtained her bachelor’s degree in orchestral conducting under Marcus Bosch and Georg Fritzsch. Starting in October 2024, she will pursue a master’s degree in orchestral conducting at HMT Munich.

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INTERVIEW

Dear Katharina, thank you for accepting my invitation. Always a pleasure to chat with such inspiring musicians. You initially pursued music studies with the goal of becoming a high school teacher. How did you decide to change direction, and what led you to pursue conducting? It was simply a matter of trying it for the […]

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Alice Lechner

Alice Lechner

Alice Lechner comes from a music-loving family. Her first encounter with the opera universe was at the tender age of six. The grandeur of the stage productions and costumes, the backstage chatter, and last, but definitely not least, the music left her in awe, beginning with Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The overall feeling that opera awakens in anyone who gets a glimpse into this part of artistic eternity, that each and every day passes the test of time, was what drew her to stay and be a part of this world. The Opera House of Brașov became her second home, and the people who worked there were her second family.

Since then, Alice has devoted her spare time to maximising her musical knowledge through instrumental studies, studying both piano and violin for a short time. In the following years, her number one passion stepped out of the limelight and graciously gave way to Law Studies.
Since 2018 she has been studying Law at “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University in Iași.

Her passion for opera, even if it is no longer her top professional priority in terms of career, it has most definitely become her priority during her free time. Wanting to experience the best of both worlds and extend her musical horizons, she regularly attends opera performances throughout Romania and abroad.
With OPERA Charm Magazine, Alice aims to nurture her creative side to help it flourish and bloom and to discover, alongside the magazine’s readers, the fascinatingly complex world of opera.

Currently, she is an LL.M. in Business Law at “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University in Iași.

Oana Zamfir

Oana Zamfir is a second year MA student at the “George Enescu” National University of Arts, at the Department of Musicology.

She studied violin for 12 years at the “Stefan Luchian” High School of Art in Botosani, later focusing on the theoretical aspects of music. In 2019 she completed her bachelor studies in Musicology as a student of the National Academy of Music “Gheorghe Dima” in Cluj-Napoca. Her research during 2018-2019 brought to the forefront elements of the archaic ritual within works of composers who activated during the communist period, giving her the opportunity to start a research internship at the “Carl von Ossietzky” University in Germany. In this context, she recorded conversations with members of the Sophie Drinker Institute in Bremen, and had access to documents directly from the Myriam Marbé archive.

Since 2019 she has been a teacher of Music Education and Theoretical Music Studies, making full use of interactive methods in the musical training of students and working, at the same time, with the children’s choir founded in the first year of her activity.

Her interests include pursuing a degree in interior design in 2020.

Alexandru Suciu

Alexandru Suciu inherited his passion for art growing up in a family of several generations of musicians. He began his musical studies at the “Augustin Bena” School of Music in Cluj, where he studied piano and guitar. Even though his main study direction was philological, his passion for music prevailed. He began his academical journey at the Faculty of Letters of the “Babeș-Bolyai” University, studying Comparative literature and English. He continued by studying Opera Singing at the “Gheorghe Dima” National Music Academy. He also graduated the Musical Education section, followed by Artistic Directing at the Musical Performing Arts department.

His multidisciplinary education opened the doors towards research, which is seen both through his participation in national and international conferences and symposia, such as the Salzburg Easter School PhD-forum, organized by the Salzburg Universität or the Silesian Meeting of Young Scholars, organized by the Institute of English at the University of Silesia, as well as the collaboration with Opera Charm Magazine.

During his student years, he won several prizes, including the Grand Prize at the “Paul Constantinescu” National Musical Interpretation Competition, the Romanian Composers and Musicologists’ Union Prize at the same competition, the First Prize and the Schubert Prize at the “Ada Ulubeanu” Competition.

He further developed his artistic skills by specializing in courses and masterclasses held by personalities such as Vittorio Terranova, Giuseppe Sabbatini, Marian Pop, Ines Salazar, Riccardo Zanellato, Paolo Bosisio, Valentina Farcaș and Manuel Lange in contexts such as the Internationale Sommerakademie für Operngesang Deutschlandsberg, Corso Internazionale di Canto Lirico I.M.C. Licata or the Europäische Akademie für Musik und darstellende Kunst Montepulciano. Besides his activity on-stage, he currently teaches Opera Singing Didactics, and Pedagogical Practice within the Department for Teacher Education and Training at the “Gheorghe Dima” National Music Academy.

Cristina Fieraru

Cristina is a 24 year-old Romanian soprano & a student at the National University of Music Bucharest, where she pursues the MA program in Vocal Performance.

She made her debut in Pamina from “Die Zauberflöte” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at only 19 years old at the Bucharest National Opera House, as a member of the Ludovic Spiess Experimental Opera Studio. Over the years she made her debut in roles such as Contessa d’Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro), Mimì & Musetta (La Bohème), Alice Ford (Falstaff), Erste Dame (Die Zauberflöte) in her university’s opera productions.
Her passion and experience extends in the field of choral music, too.

She has been part of our dream team since the fall of 2021. For a good period of time she took care of OPERA Charm’s social media and took you on the monthly journey through the history of opera through our Legends rubric – and a few times through the Theaters around the World rubric.

Her little soul rubric – from 2021 to present – is definitely the Conductors of the Future, where, every month, she gives you the chance to meet a young star of the world of conducting and, of course, to find out what’s the most charming feature of opera in these artists’ views.

BIANCA L. NICA

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