The mezzo-soprano Merit Ostermann was born at Bogen in Lower Bavaria. She grew up in Munich, going on to study singing, acting and dance at the Music Gymnasium of the August Everding Bavarian Theatre Academy. She then studied classical concert and opera singing at the Munich Hochschule for Music and Theatre with Sylvia Greenberg and Rudi Spring. She completed her studies in the masterclass and was a scholarship-holder of the German Stage Union. After experience in spoken theatre, musicals and jazz, she dedicated herself to classical music. Her operatic repertoire includes the leading rôles in Rossini’s La Cenerentola and Stabat Mater, Handel’s Messiah and Giulio Cesare, Bach’s St Matthew Passion, Offenbach’s Schöne Helena and Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. At the Andechs Orff Festival she appeared as the weaver’s wife in Wilfried Hiller’s Goggolori, and at the Gärtnerplatz Theatre she sang the rôle of Elsbeth in Strauss’s Feuersnot. She has a wide-ranging Lieder repertoire, including cycles by Schumann, Brahms, Mahler, Schoenberg and Manuel de Falla. In Ingolstadt she took the title rôle in Mayr’s oratorio David in Spelunca Engaddi for its first performance for two hundred years and in the