KARMEN PUIS

Karmen Puis graduated from Aino Kõiv’s singing class in H. Eller Tartu Music School in 1993 and in 1997 graduated from the singing class of Tiiu Levald in the Estonian Academy of Music. In 2005 she completed her master’s degree (cum laude) as a student of Jaakko Ryhänen in the Estonian Academy of Music. During her studies there she worked as a choir singer and soloist in the Estonian Radio Choir. She has also studied with A. Kapustjanski and L. Puglisi and taken part in the master classes of Professor H. Höll.

Puis has sung solo parts in many performances of major works: Mozart’s Requiem and Coronation Mass, Beethoven’s Mass C-major, Schubert’s Mass E-major, Vivaldi’s Gloria, Bach’s St Mark’s Passion, Mendelssohn’s St Paul, Mahler’s 4th Symphony, Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, and the part of Bianca in the concert version of Britten’s opera The Rape of Lucretia. Since 1997 she has been working as an opera and operetta soloist in the Vanemuine.

Her roles have included Emilia (Verdi’s Othello), Amastris (Handel’s Xerxes), Concepcion (Ravel’s The Spanish Hour), Pernille (Nielsen’s The Masquerade), Alisa (Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor), Dorabella (Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte), Olga (Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin), Hansel (Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel), Manya (Kálmán’s Countess Mariza), Suzuki (Puccini’s Madame Butterfly), Flora (Verdi’s La Traviata), The Second Lady (Mozart’s The Magic Flute), Galatea (Handel`s Acis and Galatea), Hodel (Bock’s Fiddler on the Roof), Rosalinde (Strauss`s The Bat), Mercédès (Bizet`s Carmen), Clarina (Rossini`s The Bill of Marriage), Solveig, Anitra (Grieg`s Peer Gynt), Giulietta (Offenbach`s The tales of Hoffmann).

In the Estonian National Opera she has played the Inn-keeper’s wife (Mussorgsky`s Boris Godunov).