Esther Dierkes
Esther Dierkes (born 9 February 1990) is a German operatic, concert and lied soprano. Life and career. Born in Münster, Dierkes received her first voice lessons at the age of 13. She achieved first prize in the national competition Jugend musiziert. From 2009 to 2015, she studied opera singing at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts in Hedwig Fassbender's class. In the autumn of 2014 Dierkes went with the North Rhine-Westphalia under the direction of Hubert Buchberger on a concert tour through Poland with concerts in the Philharmonies Wroclaw (Filharmonia Wroclawska) and Krakow (Filharmonia  in Karola Szymanowskiego) and in the University of Warsaw (Uniwersytet Muzyczny Fryderyka Chopina). The concert with works by Arnold Schönberg, Franz Schubert, Alban Berg and Max Reger was performed in the WDR 3 Radio under the title "Landesjugendorchester Extra". Dierkes attended master classes with Gerd Uecker, Rudolf Piernay, Edith Wiens and Helmut Deutsch. She is a regular guest at the Kölner Philharmonie, Berliner Philharmonie, Gewandhaus Leipzig, the Alte Oper Frankfurt and worked with conductors such as Hartmut Haenchen, Sylvain Cambreling, Risto Joost, Marc Soustrot, Andrew Manze, Ulf Schirmer and Bertrand de Billy. Since the 2017/18 season, Dierkes has been a  member of the ensemble of the Staatstheater Stuttgart, where she appeared as Venus in Offenbach's "Orpheus in the Underworld" and Zerlina in Mozart's "Don Giovanni".