“Singing, interpreting and taking the audience away from their everyday lives is the greatest happiness for me. It gives me the feeling of coming home.”
Denise Seyhan’s dramatic mezzo sounds fresh in all registers and has an unmistakable timbre. Thanks to her great openness and enormous enthusiasm, she can also empathise well with unusual directorial concepts. “She is an outstanding singer and a wonderful stage actress” (Elias Grandy).
The German-Turkish mezzo-soprano studied at the Musikhochschule Karlsruhe and graduated as a soprano. She then made the switch back to mezzo with Gabriele Kniesel. Through her subsequent long-term collaboration with Walter Donati and Anna Rita Esposito, her voice developed further into the dramatic realm.
Her first engagements as a mezzo were Dorabella in “Così fan tutte” at the Pasinger Fabrik, Hänsel and Maria Bellacanta (“Hexe Hillary geht in die Oper”) at the Junge Kammeroper Köln.
Under the musical direction of Johannes Witt, she sang her first dramatic role at the Rheinische Kammeroper: the Knusperhexe in “Hansel and Gretel”. The MiR Gelsenkirchen engaged her for the leading female role in the world premiere of “Konrad oder Das Kind aus der Konservenbüchse” by Gisbert Näther. She was then invited back to the MiR for the first recording of Georgs Pelecis’ orchestral work “In Honour of Henry Purcell”.
Other important engagements followed as Ulrica (“Un ballo in Maschera”) at the Frankfurt Chamber Opera, Amneris (Aida), Fricka (“Walküre”) and Maddalena (“Rigoletto”) at the Munich Theatre, Dora K. in Peter Ruzicka’s work “Benjamin” at the Heidelberg Theatre as well as the 3rd lady (Magic Flute) at the summer festival of “Opera to go”, 3rd elf in Dvořák’s “Rusalka” at the Pforzheim Theatre, and Birsen Güner in Ludger Vollmer’s “Gegen die Wand” at the Giessen Theatre. In the world premiere of Robert Jíša’s chamber opera “Durst” at the Olomouc Music Festival in the Czech Republic (2022) and in its film adaptation (2021) at Tanzquartier Wien (TQW), she took on the alto role.
From autumn 2022 to March 2023, she made her debut at the Megalomania Theatre in Frankfurt am Main under the musical direction of Daniel Stratievsky as Mrs Peachum (“Dreigroschenoper”), as Old Lady and Paquette in “Candide” by L. Bernstein and as Erda, Fricka (“Rheingold”) and Flosshilde in “Ring an einem Abend”. In May 2024, she made a guest appearance as the 1st Maid in the highly acclaimed production of “Elektra” at the Brandenburg Theatre.