The German Soprano Helena Bickel studied at the Musikhochschule Freiburg. She is currently being coached by the world renowned singing teacher Margreet Honig in Amsterdam.

 

She has performed the solo parts in many of the standard oratorio works, among them: Graun’s Der Tod Jesu, Bach’s Passions and Christmas Oratorio, Handel’s Messiah, Mozart’s Requiem, Mendelssohn’s Elijah and Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle. Recent highlights are Exsultate, Jubilate conducted by Edward Caswell and a children’s concert with the Freiburger Baroque Orchestra conducted by René Jacobs. She has also worked with conductors Hans-Michael Beuerle, Jörg Straube, Frank Markowitsch and Hannes Reich.

 

Helena also has a broad contemporary music repertoire. A highlight was the world premiere of the song cycle “Weltfrieden und so” by composer Clemens K. Thomas. She was scheduled to perform at the 100-year anniversary of the Donaueschinger Music Days in 2021, but unfortunately the event was cancelled due to COVID-19. In March Helena performed the world premiere of a new work by Manfred Schreier as well as works by Gerard Bunk in St Reinoldi in Dortmund, Germany.

 

As part of the regular cast of The Young Opera Company Freiburg and the Institute for Musical Theatre Freiburg Helena sang the following operatic roles: Mrs. Jaffet in Britten’s Noye’s Fludde, Komár in Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen, Sandrina in Mozart’s La finta giardiniera and Julia in Der Vetter aus Dingsda (an operetta by E. Künneke). She has been a successful candidate in multiple singing competitions at home and abroad and in August 2019 she performed several opera scenes at the Amsterdam Canal Festival Amsterdam as part of the Performing Opera programme.

 

For the past several years Helena Bickel has worked in partnership with film composer Matthias Weber. In the 2019 Austrian documentary “Wem erzählen?” she performed a movement from the Mauthausen cantata by Mikis Theodorakis.