Since her father was a member of the Swedish diplomatic corps, Anne Sofie von Otter’s childhood was spent in Bonn and London as well as Stockholm. She studied singing at both the Stockholm Conservatory and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, following this with further work on lieder with Erik Werba in Vienna and Geoffrey Parsons in London. She also studied with Vera Rosza in London from 1981. Her early appearances were with the Drottningholm Ensemble and she was a competition prizewinner in 1981 and 1982.

From 1983 to 1985 Otter sang with the Basle Opera, where her parts included Alcina / Orlando Paladino (Haydn), Cherubino / Le nozze di Figaro, Sesto / La clemenza di Tito, Hänsel / Hänsel und Gretel and Orfeo / Orfeo ed Euridice (Gluck). During 1984 she also appeared with the Marseilles Opera (as Cherubino) and at the Aix-en-Provence Festival (as Don Ramiro / La finta giardiniera).

It was during 1985 that Otter’s international career started to take off, with successful appearances as Dorabella / Così fan tutte at Geneva and as Cherubino at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin and the Royal Opera House, London. Later years of that decade saw her debuts at La Scala, Milan as Ismene in Alceste (Gluck) and at the Bavarian State Opera, Munich as Cherubino (both 1987); at the Metropolitan Opera, New York as Cherubino (1988) and at the Salzburg Festival, in a concert performance of Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust (1989).

Now widely in demand internationally, Otter sang the title role in Rossini’s Tancredi at Geneva and Cherubino at the Paris Opera in 1990. At the Royal Opera in Stockholm she participated in the premiere of Sven-David Sandström’s opera Staden in 1998, later singing the Evangelist in the first performance of the same composer’s Ordet – en passion in 2006. She returned to Covent Garden with Sesto (1989), Romeo / I Capuleti e i Montecchi (1992) and Octavian / Der Rosenkavalier (1995); to the Met with Octavian (1990, 1995), Idamante / Idomeneo (1991, 1995), Sesto (1997, 2005), Mélisande / Pelléas et Mélisande (2005) and the Countess Geschwitz / Lulu (2010); and to Salzburg with Don Ramiro (1992) and to sing in Handel’s Giulio Cesare (2012).

Later roles have also included the name-part in Carmen (Glyndebourne, 2002), Clairon / Capriccio (Paris, 2004), the Composer / Ariadne auf Naxos (Vienna), Nerone (Aix-en-Provence Festival), Ottavia / L’incoronazione di Poppea (Paris) and numerous appearances in operas by Handel, including Alcina, Ariodante and Xerxes.

Tall, slim and fine-featured, Otter has been frequently cast in operatic trouser roles; but her scope extends well beyond these. An extremely active concert singer, she programmes widely, ranging from the core repertoire through to late-Romantic and contemporary Nordic composers, as well as including the music of Kurt Weill and songs from the Theresienstadt concentration camp. She is particularly noted for her exceptionally fine interpretation of the vocal music of Mahler and has recorded extensively.

© Naxos Rights International Ltd. — David Patmore (A–Z of Singers, Naxos 8.558097-100).