The Australian mezzo-soprano Xenia Puskarz Thomas studied at the Queensland Conservatory of Griffith University, and with Edith Wiens at the Juilliard School in New York, where she was supported by the Kovner Fellowship Program. She has received the Lady Fairfax New York Scholarship of the Opera Foundation for Young Australians, the Tinkler Encouragement Award at the IFAC Australian Singing Competition and the Amelia Joscelyne Memorial Scholarship from the Melba Opera Trust. She is also a former member of the Young Artists Programme of Opera Queensland, where she appeared as Cherubino (Le nozze di Figaro). At Brisbane City Opera she has performed the role of Dorabella (Così fan tutte). During her training in New York, she sang in a recital at Alice Tully Hall, and performed Bach’s Mass in B minor with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra under Richard Egarr, Ravel’s Shéhérazade, and the role of Aristeo in Luigi Rossi’s Orfeo under Avi Stein. In 2023 she performed the role of Fillide in Handel’s Aminta e Fillide with the New York ensemble Twelfth Night at a concert organized by Music Before 1800. In May 2024 she made her debut at New York’s Carnegie Hall with Twelfth Night.
Xenia Puskarz Thomas is currently a member of the Opera Studio of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, where she has so far sung Dachshund/Woodpecker (The Cunning Little Vixen), Kitchen Boy (Rusalka), Sandman (Hänsel und Gretel), Confidante (Elektra), Melanto/Minerva in Il ritorno/The Year of Magical Thinking after Monteverdi, Mercédès (Carmen), Second Lady (Die Zauberflöte), Flowermaiden (Parsifal), Flora (La traviata) and Servia in Respighi’s Lucrezia. She has also sung Hänsel in a semi-staged performance of Hänsel und Gretel with the ATTACCA Youth Orchestra at Munich’s Prinzregententheater. She has worked with conductors such as Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, Henrik Nánási, Titus Engel and Chris Moulds.
On the concert platform Xenia Puskarz Thomas has sung in Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Duncan Ward, in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem and in Leopold Mozart’s Missa solemnis under Christian Fröhlich.
