The Berlin mezzo-soprano studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London and at Indiana University, Bloomington. She became internationally known as Erda in Der Ring des Nibelungen in the Frank Castorf production under Kirill Petrenko and Marek Janowski at the Bayreuth Festival, which she sang for five summers. Permanent engagements took her to the Theater Osnabrück and the Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar, where she enjoyed great success as Carmen and in Der Ring des Nibelungen. Her broad repertoire also includes roles such as Amneris (Aida), Dalila (Samson et Dalila), Baba the Turk (The Rake's Progress), Mrs. Quickly (Falstaff), Herodias (Salome), Laura (La Gioconda), Gora (Medea), Ježibaba (Rusalka), Ulrica (Un ballo in maschera), Dritte Dame (Die Zauberflöte), Schwertleite, Flosshilde, 2. Norn, Waltraute (Der Ring des Nibelungen), Duenna (Die Verlobung im Kloster), Old Lady (Candide), Marcellina (Le nozze di Figaro) and Countess Helfenstein (Mathis der Maler).

In concert, she has performed Beethoven's 9th Symphony, Missa solemnis and Mass in C, Mahler's 2nd and 8th Symphonies and Das Lied von der Erde, Brahms' Alto Rhapsody, Bernstein's Jeremiah Symphony, Mendelssohn's Elias, Bach's Johannespassion, Berio's Folk Songs, Dvořák's Stabat mater, Verdi's Requiem, Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder, Schönberg's Lied der Waldtaube and Berlioz' Les nuits d'été.

She has worked with conductors such as George Alexander Albrecht, Bertrand de Billy, Michael Boder,Ivor Bolton, Carl St. Clair, Jesús López-Cobos, Christoph Eschenbach, Adam Fischer, Asher Fisch, Lawrence Foster, James Gaffigan, Valery Gergiev, Pablo Heras-Casado, Anthony Hermus, Daniel Huppert, Dmitri Jurowski,Vladimir Jurowski, Kirill Karabits, Lothar Koenigs, Fabio Luisi, Antonello Manacorda, Enrique Mazzola, Zubin Mehta, Henrik Nánási, Adrien Perruchon, Kirill Petrenko, Christian Thielemann, Sebastian Weigle, Simone Young and Lothar Zagrosek, as well as stage directors Robert Carsen, Frank Castorf, Mariame Clément, La Fura dels Baus, Achim Freyer, Jean-Louis Grinda, Claus Guth, Barrie Kosky, Marco Arturo Marelli, Olivier Py, Alexandra Semerédy and Magdolna Parditka, and Michael Schulz.

Guest appearances have taken her to the Salzburg and Bregenz Festivals and the festivals in Glyndebourne, Edinburgh, Adelaide, Auckland, as well as to London, Milan, Bari, Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Bilbao, Paris, Marseille, Bordeaux, Monte-Carlo, Budapest, Geneva, Hamburg, Munich, Düsseldorf, Dresden, Frankfurt, Baden-Baden, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Bergen, Tokyo, and Seoul.

She is a prizewinner of international competitions such as Rheinsberg, Francisco-Viñas Barcelona, Hilde Zadek Vienna and the Wagner Competition Seattle.

The past seasons have seen her returning to the the Komische Oper Berlin as Leokadja Begbick and as Cupido in Barrie Kosky's acclaimed Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny and Orpheus in the Underworld productions, singing Amneris in Aida in Chemnitz, Old Burja in Jenufa in Robert Carsen’s acclaimed production in Seville and Ghent, Geneviève in Pelléas et Mélisande in Bucharest, Paris, and Bergen, Quickly in Falstaff in Katowice, and in new contemporary repertoire as Trump in Bernhard Lang’s mono-opera „Playing Trump“ directed by Ruth Asralda in Berlin.