Helene Ranada is Swedish by birth. She studied singing in Malmö and Copenhagen, where she made her début as Florence Pike in Britten’s Albert Herring. She appeared as Erda in Das Rheingold and as Brigitta in Die tote Stadt in Stockholm, and in Oldenburg as Waltraute and the Second Norn in Götterdämmerung. In 1999 she was a finalist in the Oslo Queen Sonja Competition, where she won the Edvard Grieg Prize. Further guest engagements have taken her to the Scottish Opera in Glasgow and to the Edinburgh Festival as Erda. From 2000 to 2002 she was a member of the Vienna State Opera, with rôles including those of Annina, Erda, Flosshilde, the First Norn, Dryad in Ariadne auf Naxos and Mary in The Flying Dutchman. Since 2002 she has been a member of the Stuttgart State Opera, where her rôles have included Tolomeo in Giulio Cesare in Egitto, Magdalena in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Schwertleite in Die Walküre and the Messenger in L’Orfeo, as well as the First Norn/Flosshilde in Götterdämmerung and the First Maid Magd in Elektra.