Norma Sharp
Norma Sharp (born July 20, 1943) is an American opera soprano. She is known for Mozart and Richard Strauss, and she sang Wagner at the Bayreuth Festival. Most of her career was in Germany, and since 1992 she has taught voice at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin.
She grew up in Shawnee, Oklahoma, and studied at the University of Kansas. She trained on scholarships at the Hamburg Conservatory with Helmut Melchert and at the Cologne Conservatory with Peter Witsch. She sang with the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe. Her lyric, spinto voice suited many Mozart and Strauss roles.
Her major appearances included Covent Garden in London, the Scottish Opera in Glasgow, and Glyndebourne in 1978 as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni. She made her La Scala debut as the Countess in Le nozze di Figaro.
At Bayreuth she sang from 1977 to 1981 in the centenary Ring cycle directed by Patrice Chéreau, taking roles such as Woglinde and Waldvogel, and she appeared as a flower maiden in Parsifal. She also performed in recitals of German Romantic and modern songs with pianists like Irwin Gage and Wolfram Rieger.
Since 1992 she has been a professor of voice at the Berlin conservatory. Some of her Bayreuth work is available on film recordings from that period.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 19:29 (CET).