Catarina Molder was born in Lisbon. She holds a Masters's Degree from Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa, and continued her training in the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg, with a scholarship from Gulbenkian Foundation and from German Government.
Catarina Molder has an extensive performance experience and a repertoire that ranges from Verdi and Puccini to Schostakovith. Despite her dramatic voice, she is moving with great ease to a more lyrical one, as well to musiktheater repertoire and contemporary opera.
She combines with flexibility and eclecticism, artistic management and strategic view skills with vocal and performing talent. She is opera singer, artistic director, TV presenter, TV director, producer, manager, projects generator, instigator, and provoker, not only interested in incarnating the big repertoire as a singer and performer but also doing new opera commissions, being an active player building new paths for this art form to evolve and taking part of it.
Aiming at finding new eclectic ways of communicating and presenting opera to the audiences of today she created, sang and presented a TV Series, for the national TV channel RTP2 – Super Diva - Ópera para todos (opera for everyone), winning the Author Society 2013 Award for the best Cultural TV show 2013, already with three Portuguese seasons and one English, co-produced with Unitel and worldwide distributed.
Within her Opera Company – Ópera do Castelo, based in Lisbon, she has been creating her own opera projects, presenting opera in innovative formats, where she also performs ((Im)possible Mission, Baroque Opera(tions), Memory of Angels, Voyage, Opera Delirium, Daggers and Fights, Five ways do die of love, Mortal Heroins), launching site-specific projects and Festivals (Street Opera Festival), doing frequently new music and opera commissions and presenting new Portuguese versions of great opera repertoire such as The Magic Flute, La Bohème, Plagliacci.
Catarina Molder also has been greatly committed with communicating opera, art song and contemporary opera to younger generations, touring all over Portugal staged recitals for children (Children’s Universe, Lyrical fun and Cati, the witch, with electronic music) and created and recorded the cd/book Let’s sing the classics and the opera tale The little Tomb and Babar, the Elephant. For the Gulbenkian Foundation she conceived and directed during five seasons, the Educational Project “Discovering Music”: designing workshops to explore all kinds of musical languages, staged concerts, narrated concerts, mingling contemporary music, contemporary visual arts and opera, to reach out audiences of all ages.
At the National Opera House of São Carlos in Lisbon and in the main Portuguese Theatres, she was Musetta and Mimi in La Bohème, 1st Lady in The Magic Flute, Don Elvira in Don Giovanni, Micaela in Carmen, Doctor Faustos in Nefertiti by José Júlio Lopes, the Mother in Humperdink’s Hänsel und Gretel, Jodi in Jérémy Fisher by Isabelle Aboulker, Nedda in Pagglicci and Tosca.
She participated in song recitals, chamber music, and opera galas in the International Music Festival of Macau and in the main Portuguese Music Festivals.
She presented and performed opera in many unconventional places and in varied transdisciplinary projects she designed to be presented in discos, in the public space, in public gardens, public transportations and schools.
She made several recordings for the National radio and performed with the main Portuguese Orchestras.
In 2020 she launched with great public impact the festival Operafest Lisboa combining tradition and vanguardism, with 8 absolute premieres, investing in where she also co-directed and incarnated Tosca, incarnated Cio-cio San in a new production of Madama Butterfly in Operafest Lisboa 2021 and will be Amelia in Un Ballo in Maschera in 2022 Operafest’s edition.
Future projects include the absolute creation for TV the opera fiction series Red Curtain, and the tour of her solo show Five ways to die of love.
Catarina Molder has an extensive performance experience and a repertoire that ranges from Verdi and Puccini to Schostakovith. Despite her dramatic voice, she is moving with great ease to a more lyrical one, as well to musiktheater repertoire and contemporary opera.
She combines with flexibility and eclecticism, artistic management and strategic view skills with vocal and performing talent. She is opera singer, artistic director, TV presenter, TV director, producer, manager, projects generator, instigator, and provoker, not only interested in incarnating the big repertoire as a singer and performer but also doing new opera commissions, being an active player building new paths for this art form to evolve and taking part of it.
Aiming at finding new eclectic ways of communicating and presenting opera to the audiences of today she created, sang and presented a TV Series, for the national TV channel RTP2 – Super Diva - Ópera para todos (opera for everyone), winning the Author Society 2013 Award for the best Cultural TV show 2013, already with three Portuguese seasons and one English, co-produced with Unitel and worldwide distributed.
Within her Opera Company – Ópera do Castelo, based in Lisbon, she has been creating her own opera projects, presenting opera in innovative formats, where she also performs ((Im)possible Mission, Baroque Opera(tions), Memory of Angels, Voyage, Opera Delirium, Daggers and Fights, Five ways do die of love, Mortal Heroins), launching site-specific projects and Festivals (Street Opera Festival), doing frequently new music and opera commissions and presenting new Portuguese versions of great opera repertoire such as The Magic Flute, La Bohème, Plagliacci.
Catarina Molder also has been greatly committed with communicating opera, art song and contemporary opera to younger generations, touring all over Portugal staged recitals for children (Children’s Universe, Lyrical fun and Cati, the witch, with electronic music) and created and recorded the cd/book Let’s sing the classics and the opera tale The little Tomb and Babar, the Elephant. For the Gulbenkian Foundation she conceived and directed during five seasons, the Educational Project “Discovering Music”: designing workshops to explore all kinds of musical languages, staged concerts, narrated concerts, mingling contemporary music, contemporary visual arts and opera, to reach out audiences of all ages.
At the National Opera House of São Carlos in Lisbon and in the main Portuguese Theatres, she was Musetta and Mimi in La Bohème, 1st Lady in The Magic Flute, Don Elvira in Don Giovanni, Micaela in Carmen, Doctor Faustos in Nefertiti by José Júlio Lopes, the Mother in Humperdink’s Hänsel und Gretel, Jodi in Jérémy Fisher by Isabelle Aboulker, Nedda in Pagglicci and Tosca.
She participated in song recitals, chamber music, and opera galas in the International Music Festival of Macau and in the main Portuguese Music Festivals.
She presented and performed opera in many unconventional places and in varied transdisciplinary projects she designed to be presented in discos, in the public space, in public gardens, public transportations and schools.
She made several recordings for the National radio and performed with the main Portuguese Orchestras.
In 2020 she launched with great public impact the festival Operafest Lisboa combining tradition and vanguardism, with 8 absolute premieres, investing in where she also co-directed and incarnated Tosca, incarnated Cio-cio San in a new production of Madama Butterfly in Operafest Lisboa 2021 and will be Amelia in Un Ballo in Maschera in 2022 Operafest’s edition.
Future projects include the absolute creation for TV the opera fiction series Red Curtain, and the tour of her solo show Five ways to die of love.