Rafaela Seywald

Having grown up in a family where the most natural thing to do while walking in the woods was to sing a canon, Rafaela Seywald always kept her focus on uniting humans to make music together. Trained as a conductor, pianist and singer, she is currently working as maestra suggeritrice (prompter-conductor) and stage music conductor at Bayerische Staatsoper, where she worked a.o. with Vladimir Jurowski and Daniele Rustioni. Rafaela is a passionate répétiteur, chamber musician and Lied-accompanist, foremost together with her sister Alexandra Maria. Since 2016 she has produced and conducted her own orchestra, opera and choir projects. She has performed with the Orchestra of the National Opera- and Ballettheater Kharkiv, Animato Orchester München and ensembles such as the Webern Chamber Choir of MDW (University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna) and the Austrian National Youth Choir. Especially interested in opera and interdisciplinary projects, Rafaela and stage director Adriana Hernandez Flores developed a film-opera rendition of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, including elements of contemporary dance and electronic music which premiered in June 2021 and won several prizes at international film festivals. Following the completion of her degree in piano pedagogy at MDW, Rafaela Seywald studied conducting with Mark Stringer, Alois Glaßner and now Sian Edwards. Additionally, she has participated in masterclasses with Marin Alsop and Mark Heron (as an orchestra conductor) as well as Josep Vila y Casañas and Johannes Prinz (as a choral conductor) and spent an exchange semester at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. Rafaela has won first prizes both as a soloist and as a chamber musician at the Austrian youth music competition „Prima la musica“ and in 2020 was awarded the Sylff Fellowship of the Tokyo Foundation for Young Artists for her conducting projects