Allison Oakes is an internationally acclaimed dramatic soprano whose work spans the major opera houses and festivals of Europe and the United States, including the Metropolitan Opera and the Bayreuth Festival. Following her early years as an ensemble member in Germany, she has built a distinguished freelance career collaborating with leading conductors of our time. Since 2024, she has been Professor of Voice at the Mozarteum University Salzburg.
Allison Oakes is one of the most sought-after dramatic sopranos on international stages today. She studied singing in Germany with Kammersängerin Prof. Gudrun Fischer, initially as a mezzo-soprano, before moving into the lyric-dramatic soprano repertoire at the beginning of her professional career.
After three years as an ensemble member at the Staatstheater Darmstadt, she began working as a freelance artist, appearing at major international venues including the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Bayreuth Festival, the Hamburg State Opera and the Bavarian State Opera, the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Berlin Philharmonie, the Semperoper Dresden and Oper Leipzig, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam and Teatro Massimo Palermo, English National Opera and the BBC Philharmonic, La Fenice in Venice and the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, as well as the opera houses of Cologne and Frankfurt. Her engagements have also taken her to numerous theatres and festivals across Europe, as well as to Japan, South Korea, South Africa and the United States.
She has worked with leading conductors including Kirill Petrenko, Christian Thielemann, Vladimir Jurowski, Donald Runnicles, Kent Nagano, Alain Altinoglu, Marek Janowski, Jeffrey Tate, Omer Meir Wellber, Alexander Soddy, Adam Fischer and Sebastian Weigle. In addition to her operatic work, she appears in recital and concert, with a repertoire ranging from English folk song and German Lied to orchestral works such as Strauss’s Vier letzte Lieder and Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder. She is also a prizewinner of several international singing competitions.
Before turning to professional vocal studies, Allison Oakes completed a degree in the medical field and worked as a diagnostic radiographer. Her detailed anatomical knowledge informs her teaching, particularly in her work with opera studios and masterclasses. In 2024, she was appointed Professor of Voice at the Mozarteum University Salzburg.