Catarina Molder
Born in Lisbon, Catarina Molder holds a degree in singing from ESML and a postgraduate degree in singing from the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg, as a scholarship recipient from the German government and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
Her dramatic voice moves within a repertoire ranging from Verdi and Puccini to cabaret and contemporary music. She has performed in major Portuguese theaters, festivals, and orchestras, and has participated in and created cross-disciplinary projects, working with directors and choreographers such as Tânia Carvalho, Aldara Bizarro, Olga Roriz, and directors Miguel Loureiro, Lígia Roque, Sandra Faleiro, Michel Dieiaide, José Caldas, Mónica Garnel, Daniel Kerck, among others.
A visionary and multifaceted soprano, Catarina combines interpretive talent and charisma with management skills, having created her own production structure – the Ópera do Castelo, one of the most significant independent opera production structures in Portugal and an unavoidable figure in communicating opera to new audiences in Portugal. Bringing unprecedented vitality to the national opera scene, she develops pioneering work, widely recognized nationally and internationally, where she conceives, produces and performs in innovative opera projects with multiple crossovers, including audiovisual formats, to renew and bring opera to all audiences.
In addition to numerous opera performances with varied repertoire and context, she stands out for the television series Super Diva – Opera for All, for RTP2, whose first series won the SPA Award for best television program in 2013. Having produced the following two seasons (2015 and 2018) and still producing the third, also with an English version for international distribution, which featured the biggest stars of world opera such as Antonio Pappano, Magdalena Kozena, Sonya Yoncheva or Rolando Villazón, and the unprecedented creation of Twitter opera, short operas in short film format.
In 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, a new Opera Festival was launched in Lisbon by Mrs Molder – Operafest – which finally put Portugal on the map of international opera festivals, with repeated success in subsequent years, becoming the largest national opera event. Crossing tradition and avant-garde, it has held numerous world premieres and commissions, and is already considered one of the most "out-of-the-box" European festivals. Within the Operafest framework, it also launched the only national contemporary opera competition – Maratona Ópera XXI, responsible for the emergence of numerous talents from all areas: composers, librettists, conductors, directors, and singers. Catarina Molder also encarnated Puccini's Tosca at Operafest, in a new production by her co-directed, Cio-cio san in a production of Madama Butterfly directed by Olga Roriz, as well as starring in Amélia in Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera, Puccini's Suor Angelica, Santuzza and Nedda in the double bill Cavalleria rusticana, and Pagliacci and Baber’s Vanessa in national premiere.
In 2022, she presented and starred the world premiere of the opera "The Man of Dreams" at the São Luiz Theatre, commissioned by the Castelo Opera, followed by a tour to the Viriato Theatre, Guarda Theatre, and Operafest. She also directed its film version for RTP2 in 2024, which was also distributed internationally. In January 2025, she launched a new classical song festival to revitalize the genre – Liedfest – and played Vanessa in the national premiere of Samuel Barber's opera at the São Luiz Theatre.
She created and launched in April 2026 POP - the Portuguese Opera Portal a digital platform to enhance access to and dissemination of Portuguese opera from its origins to the present day, its context and evolution, composers, and opera as well as scores. Next September she will premiere her new television project, an operatic fiction series for RTP2 directed by Carlos Conceição, and preparing the world premiere of António Chagas Rosa's new opera "The Prodigious Physicist," based on the eponymous novel by Jorge de Sena, where she will play Dona Hurraca.