Rea Claudia Kost
Rea Claudia Kost was born in Zurich in 1979. She studied singing with Maarten Koningsberger and Margreet Honig at the Amsterdam Conservatory, from which she graduated with distinction. She subsequently attended De Nieuwe Opera Academie and master classes in Amsterdam and The Hague in addition to training as a yoga teacher at the Yoga and Vedanta Foundation in Utrecht. She won a study scholarship from the Swiss arts promotion scheme Migros-Kulturprozent in 2006. She has appeared as a guest at various operatic societies and festivals in the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland, including Opera Trionfo, De Nationale Reisopera, the Gergiev Festival in Rotterdam, the Grachtenfestival in Amsterdam, the Zurich Festival and the Davos Festival for young artists.
She has played various staple roles for mezzo-soprano, including Purcell’s Dido, Gluck’s Orfeo and Mozart’s Cherubino, as well as roles in contemporary operas, including Wife in Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Greek and Sugar in Daniel Fueter’s Forelle Stanley. Since 2010, she has performed various programmes of chansons and projects combining music and literature at small venues in and around Zurich. She appeared as a guest singer at the Zurich Schauspielhaus in productions of Le bourgeois gentilhomme in 2013 and Die Zehn Gebote (the ten commandments) in 2015/16. She lives in Zurich with her two children and husband, the baritone Niklaus Kost, and works as a freelance singer and teacher of singing and yoga.