Clarry Bartha was born in Västerås (Sweden) in 1956 to Hungarian-Swedish parents. At the age of sixteen she moved to Rome to study at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia with Maria Teresia Pediconi. She received her master’s diploma under Giorgio Favaretto at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and continued her studies in London with Vera Rózsa. She went on to win first prizes at the international Beniamino Gigli and Vincenzo Bellini singing competitions in Italy.
She made her stage debut at Drottningholm Palace Theatre as Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. From 1987 to 1994 she was a member of the Frankfurt Opera ensemble, while also appearing at many of the world’s leading opera houses and festivals, including Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie / Brussels, Palais Garnier and Opéra Bastille / Paris, Teatro dell’Opera / Rome, Royal Opera House Covent Garden / London, Welsh National Opera / Cardiff, as well as in Gothenburg, Berne, Basel, Zurich, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Belgrade, Palermo, Florence, Marseille, Montpellier, Nancy, Catania, Stockholm, Prague, Bologna, Genoa, Linz, Innsbruck, Berlin, Leipzig, Bonn, Nuremberg and Düsseldorf. Her repertoire encompassed opera and oratorio, major symphonic works and chamber music.
Her discography and film productions include collaborations with leading European orchestras: Les Danaides (Salieri, EMI), Guenter von Schwarzburg (Holzbauer, Naxos), Tchaikovsky’s Women (a film by Christopher Nupen, conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy), as well as recordings for RAI Italia, BBC, Radio France, Sveriges Radio, HR, BR, NDR and WDR. Among the conductors she worked with are Gary Bertini, Armin Jordan, Gianluigi Gelmetti, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Mark Wigglesworth, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Neeme Järvi, Paavo Järvi, Oleg Caetani, Manfred Honeck, Gerd Albrecht, Antonio Pappano, János Fürst, Jesús López Cobos, Imre Palló, Arnold Östman, Michael Boder, Jiří Kout and Fabrizio Ventura. Her stage collaborations include directors such as Göran Järvefeldt, Rudolf Noelte, Graham Vick, David Alden, Alexander von Pfeil, Nicolas Brieger, Stein Winge, Liliana Cavani, Nikolaus Lehnhof, Brigitte Fassbaender, Willy Decker, Herbert Wernicke, Robert Wilson, Bruno Klimek, Ruth Berghaus, Christopher Nel, Vasily Barkhatov and Peter Konwitschny.
From 2011 onwards, her focus shifted from life on stage to work behind the scenes. Following the death of her husband, Professor Reiner Schmidt, she became President of the jointly founded Förderkreis Bronnbacher Klassik – an association dedicated to supporting music and culture at Bronnbach Monastery – and took on the artistic direction of the concert series Bronnbacher Musikfrühling and Masters of Tomorrow. Supporting and encouraging young musicians has always been a cause close to her heart. In 2016 she became Artistic Director of DEBUT, the international classical singing competition for young artists. During the 2020/21 season she also served as Casting Director of the renowned Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago and as Chief Coordinator of the Festival’s own opera academy, the Accademia Pucciniana. In addition, she regularly gives masterclasses and workshops in Germany, Italy, Australia and New Zealand. Recent teaching activities have included the Mozartfest Würzburg (MozartLabor with Christophe Rousset, 2024; with Benjamin Appl, 2025), the International Singer Academy Michaelstein, the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, the Mozarteum University Salzburg, as well as the Frankfurt Opera.
For her cultural and social commitment she became, in 2016, the first woman to be awarded the Main-Tauber District’s Cultural Prize. In the following year she and the DEBUT team were awarded the Gottlob Frick Medal for their dedication to supporting young singers. In the summer of 2022, after a ten-year stage break, she made her comeback at the Bregenz Festival in a celebrated production of Umberto Giordano’s Siberia in the role of “La Fanciulla / The Old Woman”. This was followed by engagements at Frankfurt Opera in a revival of Franz Schreker’s Der ferne Klang and a new staging of Siberia at the Bonn Opera. In the 2025/26 season she will return to the stage as Kabanicha in Leoš Janáček’s Katja Kabanowa at the Landestheater Linz.
Since January 2024, Clarry Bartha has held the position of Casting Manager for Opera, Oratorio and Symphonic Works at the Haydn Foundation in Bolzano, Italy.
