In January 2021, Spanish mezzo-soprano Carmen Artaza was awarded the 1st prize at the 58th Concurso Internacional de Canto Tenor Francesc Viñas as well as the Mozart Prize, the Audience Prize, and three other special prizes at this competition Artaza returned to Barcelona in January 2022, where she sang a recital at the Gran Teatre del Liceu as a prize winner of the Tenor Viñas Competition.

Carmen Artaza made her debut as Dorabella in a new production of Così fan tutte at the Hanover State Opera in spring 2021. In the 2021/22 season, the mezzo-soprano will return as Dorabella to Hanover. She also made her debut at the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid, where she performed the role of Martina in the new production of I. Albeniz’s The Magic Opal.

Since the 2021/22 season Carmen Artaza is a member of the Yound Artits Program of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein and can be heard there as Lola (Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana), Kater (Montsalvatge’s Der gestiefelte Kater), Grimgerde (Wagner’s Die Walküre), Sandmännchen (Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel) and Flora Bervoix (Verdi’s La traviata). In May 2022 she will be guest at ABAO Opera Bilbao as Suzuki in G. Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.

In the 2020/21 season, Carmen Artaza made her debut at the Teatro Real in Madrid, where she sang an opera gala as part of the Viñas competition success. The mezzo-soprano participated in the Festival Internacional Quincena Musical San Sebastian with a recital in the summer of 2021, where she will return next summer.

In the summer of 2019, Carmen Artaza debuted at the Salzburg Festival as Bradamante in the world premiere of Der Gesang der Zauberinsel, as a participant of the Young Singers Project of the Salzburg Festival (YSP). Carmen Artaza was invited by the YSP to sing an opera gala with the title “Young Talents of the Salzburg Festival” in Mallorca with the Orquesta Sinfónica de las Islas Baleares in the summer of 2021.

On the concert podium, the young singer has already been able to work with orchestras such as the Orquesta Sinfónica de las Islas Baleares, Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid, Munich Symphony Orchestra, the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, London Symphony Orchestra, Bayerische Kammerphilharmonie, Bamberg Symphony Orchestra and the Konzerthausorchester Berlin.

At London’s Barbican Concert Hall, Carmen Artaza made her debut as Paquette in a semi-staged performance of Leopnard Bernstein’s Candide with the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Marin Alsop.

As a regular guest at the Berlin Philharmonie, Carmen Artaza sang the alto role in Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s Elias with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonic Choir Berlin under the baton of Jörg-Peter Weigle in 2019, and also appeared there in Bach’s Magnificat or Handel’s Israel in Egypt.

In a BBC Total Immersion concert she sang Enrique Granados La maja dolorosa I, II, III which was also recorded for BBC3.

In 2020 she won the 1st Prize at the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy-Hochschulwettbewerbs, 1st Prize, Audience Prize and Young Singers Prize at the Luis Mariano International Singing Competition in Irun, Spain in 2018, as well as a Promotional Prize in the junior cathegory at the 45th Bundeswettbewerb Gesang Berlin in 2016.

Carmen Artaza studied at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt am Main with Prof. Michelle Breedt. Before that she studied at the Munich Musikhochschule with Christiane Iven and at the Guildhall School of music and drama in London. She attended master classes with Brigitte Fassbaender, Christa Ludwig at the Richard Strauss Festival Garmisch Patenkirchen and with Teresa Berganza, Anne Sofie von Otter and Helmut Deutsch.

Spanish mezzo-soprano Carmen Artaza was born in San Sebastián, Spain and began her musical training on the violin at the Conservatorio Francisco Escudero and in the Araoz Gazte Choir.