Catharine Woodward is a British dramatic soprano resident in Germany. In early 2025 she completed her first two full "Ring" Cycles as Brünnhilde for Regents Opera in London to great acclaim. In the summer of 2025, she returned to the Bayreuther Festspiele as Gerhilde "Die Walküre".
Engagements of the 2025/26 season include Gerhilde in "Die Walküre" for Oper Wuppertal, Aufseherin in "Elektra" with the Dresden Philharmonic conducted by Donald Runnicles, and her role debut in the Longborough Festival Opera in the UK as Isolde in "Tristan und Isolde", a role she will also cover for Dutch National Opera.
Since moving into the dramatic repertoire, she has been twice in the live finals of the Lauritz Melchior (Wagner) Competition in Denmark and has been selected as one of the top singers in NYIOP's anonymous audition project ANON:DE. Her first Wagner role was Eva in "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg" in 2019. In February 2022, she made her debut as Leonora di Vargas in "La forza del destino" for Regent’s Opera in London. On the concert stage she has sung Isolde in Act 2 of "Tristan und Isolde" the Tonhalle Zürich and Kundry in Act 2 of "Parsifal" in London for New Palace Opera.
Catharine Woodward studied Music at the University of Durham, Vocal Performance at Trinity Laban and at the Alexander Gibson Opera School at The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. She has worked at the Royal and Ballet and Opera, Covent Garden, English National Opera, Scottish Opera, the Aix-en-Provence Festival and many other prestigious companies and festivals. Career highlights include a documentary for the Open University – "Future Diva" and performing at Buckingham Palace for the Queen’s Coronation Festival in 2014. In 2017 she appeared in comedy series "Taskmaster" on Dave and demonstrated the function of the vocal tract by singing Puccini in an MRI scanner for the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures. In January 2018 she performed excerpts of "Madama Butterfly" as a featured artist in ITV drama "Next Of Kin".
Her opera roles include all three Brünnhilde parts, Eva in "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg", Elisabetta in "Don Carlo", Leonora di Vargas in "La forza del destino", Mimì in "La boheme" (Regent’s Opera), Donna Elvira in "Don Giovanni" (Diva Opera UK), Alice Ford in "Falstaff" (Fulham Opera), Edna in "Tobias and the Angel" and Sarah in "Clemency" (both Highbury Opera Theatre). Roles in preparation include Elsa in "Lohengrin", Kundry in "Parsifal", Elektra, and the Kostelnička in "Jenufa".