Erika Sunnegårdh

Erika Sunnegårdh (born March 11, 1966) is a Swedish operatic soprano. She lived for many years in New York, where she made a much reported debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 2006, and now lives in Vienna.

Erika Sunnegårdh was born in Danderyd in . Her parents were both prominent voice teachers: her father, Arne Sunnegårdh, worked with Birgit Nilsson and Jussi Björling and was chorus master at the Royal Swedish Opera and a professor at the , and her mother, Margareta Backer-Sunnegårdh, was a coloratura soprano. Her half-brother Thomas Sunnegårdh is a tenor.

As a student in Sweden Erika Sunnegårdh attended Adolf Fredrik's Music School in Stockholm. She lived in the U.S. for 26 years starting in 1985; she moved there at 19 to dance, graduated from the Manhattan School of Music in 1992 and earned an M.A. from the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, and worked as a waitress, caterer and tour guide in New York, singing at recitals and as a funeral cantor.

Sunnegårdh made her operatic debut in September 2004 at the Malmö Opera in Puccini's Turandot. She subsequently sang Turandot again in Sweden, gave orchestral concerts there, and performed the title role in Beethoven's Fidelio with the Florentine Opera in Milwaukee.

Having already signed a contract with the Metropolitan Opera in May 2004, she made her debut there at short notice at a Saturday matinee on April 1, 2006, singing the title role in Fidelio as a substitute for Karita Mattila. The performance was broadcast in the live Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts series, and she appeared on NBC's Today show the following morning. She was also understudy for Elsa in Wagner's Lohengrin that season and was engaged to sing in the Ring that season, in Mozart's The Magic Flute the following season, and then in spring 2007 as joint lead in Turandot and again in Fidelio. In the event she first sang Turandot there a few weeks in advance of her first scheduled appearance, stepping in for Andrea Gruber.

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