She has worked as a soloist with Ensemble 1700, which she founded, since 2002; she also performs regularly with renowned Baroque ensembles and orchestras such as Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca, Musica Antiqua Köln, Arte del Mondo, B’Rock, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, the Academy of Ancient Music, Al Ayre Español, Il Suonar Parlante, Zefiro and Concerto Köln.
Having completed her training in Cologne, Amsterdam and Milan (recorder performance, music education and German), she made her international debut in 1997, winning first prize at the SRP/Moeck UK Competition at London’s Wigmore Hall. Since then, performances have taken her to major festivals and concert halls around the world, including the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux, Teatro Colón Buenos Aires, Grand Théâtre de Genève, Laeiszhalle Hamburg, KKL Luzern, Tonhalle Zurich, Auditorio Nacional Madrid, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées Paris and DeSingel Antwerp.
In addition to her intensive involvement with Baroque music, Dorothee Oberlinger is also passionate about contemporary and avant-garde music; she was involved, for example, in the 2009 album Touch by the Swiss pop duo Yello. Since 2004 she has been a professor at the Mozarteum University, where she headed the Institute for Early Music from 2008 to 2018 and developed it into an internationally recognised centre for the study of historical performance practice. She is artistic director of two major Early Music festivals in Germany: the Potsdam Sanssouci Music Festival and the Bad Arolsen Baroque Festival.
She made her international debut as an opera conductor at the 2017 Göttingen Handel Festival with a production of Handel’s Lucio Cornelio Silla, followed by Polifemo by Bononcini (2019), Telemann’s Pastorelle en musique (2021) and Giuseppe Scarlatti’s I portentosi effetti de la madre natura (2022). In 2022, the federal programme NEUSTART KULTUR funded the stage production of the serenata Il giardino d’amore by Alessandro Scarlatti under the direction of Dorothee Oberlinger with her Ensemble 1700. Financial support from the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia enabled the realisation of a number of further Baroque opera projects between 2022 and 2024.
Dorothee Oberlinger is an honorary citizen of her home town of Simmern. In 2021 she was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit, First Class, by the German President for her achievements in the field of culture.
