ANDREA GRUBER is enjoying an international career, singing some of the most demanding roles of the dramatic soprano literature in many of the best theaters in the world. She makes her debut at La Scala this season in the title role of Turandot and returns to the San Francisco Opera for her first Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana. Luciano Berio's home theater in Genoa chose her to give the Italian premiere of the late composer's finale to Turandot. She returns to the Metropolitan Opera as Abagaille in Nabucco and to the Seattle Opera for her first performances of the title role in La fanciulla del west. She finishes the season at the Arena di Verona - which last summer bestowed upon her their coveted "Premio" Award for the season's outstanding artist - for performances of Aida. Return engagements at the Met, Chicago, San Francisco, and Covent Garden are already planned.

Gruber gained recognition at an early age for the power of her voice and her keen and deeply felt musicianship. She quickly developed in the spinto roles of Verdi, with Leonora in La forza del destino serving as both her operatic and European debuts at the Scottish Opera. She performed her first Amelia in Simon Boccanegra in Santiago, her first Aida for the Seattle Opera and her first Elizabetta in Don Carlo at the Met. Together with Un ballo in maschera these works have taken her repeatedly to the major stages of the world, including the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Vienna Staatsoper, the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, the Deutsche Opera Berlin as well as the Staatsoper Berlin, and the Liceo in Barcelona. She broadened into the dramatic Verdi repertoire with her first Nabucco, which marked her San Francisco Opera debut in 1999, and her first Odabella in Attila for her debut at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 2000, opposite Samuel Ramey in the title role. She repeated this role for her debut at the Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires. A triumphant Arena di Verona debut in summer 2002 as Abigaille resulted in several seasons' re-engagement.

While still a member of the Metropolitan Opera Studio, Andrea Gruber made her professional debut at the Ravinia Festival in a performance of the Verdi Requiem with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Levine. Maestro Levine also led her in her early performances of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis and in her Metropolitan Opera house debut as Amelia in Un ballo in maschera. Their relationship continued in 2001 when Ms. Gruber performed the role of Abagaille in a new production of Nabucco, as well as the role of Tove in Schoenberg's Gurrelieder during the Met's Spring 2001 tour of Japan. She returned to the Met in the Fall of 2002, when she sang for the first time the title role of Turandot and repeated performances of Nabucco with Maestro Levine later in the season. She made her Paris Opera debut in November 2002 in Turandot, and her Bologna debut under Danielle Gatti in Un ballo in maschera in early 2003.

The German repertoire has also been prominent in Ms. Gruber's career; an early Elsa in Lohengrin in Seattle was an enormous success and was followed by an immediate reengagement in that theater for her first Chrysothemis in Elektra. At the Met she sang the Third Nom in Götterdammerung when the current Ring production was new and she appears on the Deutsche Grammophon audio and video recordings of these performances. In 2001 she sang the dual roles of Elisabeth and Venus in Tannhäuser for the first time with the Tulsa Opera, and in 2002 she sang her first Sieglinde in a concert performance of Die Walkiire with the Atlanta Symphony under Donald Runnicles.

Andrea Gruber's orchestral repertoire includes most of the major works for the dramatic soprano including the Beethoven Ninth Symphony and Missa Solemnis, Verdi 's Requiem, Britten's War Requiem, and Strauss' Four Last Songs . Her most recent addition is Schoenberg's Gurrelieder, which she first sang with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Sir Simon Rattle in both Philadelphia and at Carnegie Hall. She also sang the role for her Toronto Symphony debut. Orchestral appearances have also taken her to the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the symphonies of Houston, London, and San Francisco under such conductors as André Previn, Roberto Abbado, and Donald Runnicles.

A native New Yorker, Andrea Gruber is a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music.