Katharine Mehrling
"She sings Kurt Weill with a voice that captures the air and the dirt of Berlin, the melancholy of Paris, and the showgirl glamour of New York." – Barrie Kosky
Katharine Mehrling is a free spirit – a traveler between worlds.
At some point, she set off to carve her own path, to find her own expression. Not in one genre, but in many; not in one language, but in many. Performing on many stages around the world, she has developed her very own personality– emerged as she says, having shed many skins, gone through numerous metamorphoses. And yet, she remains true to herself. She knows that versatility can also be challenging. But it’s here that she finds her greatest freedom: never being confined, but constantly reinventing herself.
Her audience enjoys her in her many roles and in her solo evenings at the Bar jeder Vernunft or at the Tipi am Kanzleramt. There, she presents herself in all her vulnerability, with self-irony, boundless energy, and joie de vivre. She lives the songs and stories from different eras, in various languages, and she means every note. Whether interpreting her own songs, an Edith Piaf chanson, or with Kurt Weill.
Barrie Kosky encouraged her to delve into the “sound of the Weimar Republic,” particularly with Kurt Weill, “the genius boundary crosser between classical and popular music.” Kosky brought her to the Komische Oper Berlin and she soon became his muse. In his productions she has triumphed as Daisy Darlington in Ball im Savoy, as Roxie Hart in Chicago commanding unequivocally the stage. Her intensive work on Kurt Weill has been a revelation for her: Katharine Mehrling makes the composer entirely her own, underlining the ambivalence between the abysmal and a great longing.
Whether with Kosky alone at the piano in the Weill evening Lonely House – or in the dramatic, wild Berlin evening MEHRLING! KOSKY! WEILL!... und mit morgen könnt ihr mich! with the Komische Oper orchestra, in which she plays nine different roles – she immerses herself with her typical intensity into this timeless repertoire and is hailed as “THE Brecht/Weill interpreter of our time.”
Katharine Mehrling was Artist in Residence at the Kurt Weill Festival in Dessau and has sung The Seven Deadly Sins multiple times, including a highly praised collaboration with the Chief Conductor of the Konzerthausorchester Joana Mallwitz. The Kurt Weill Album by Joana Mallwitz featuring Katharine Mehrling in The Seven Deadly Sins won the Grammophon Award 2025.
The world famous Brecht theatre Berliner Ensemble, created specifically for her the political Brecht evening Stranger than the Moon with music by Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, and Kurt Weill. International concerts have taken her to New York, Paris, London, from Prague to Hanoi, to Ashgabat, and to the Edinburgh International Festival. Katharine Mehrling’s yearning for the international musical stages took her from a very early age from her small town in Hesse, where her parents ran a pub, to London, Paris, and New York.
She was trained at the London Studio Centre and made her debut at the Old Vic Theatre in the anti-war musical Hair, as the only German in London’s West End. She then moved to Paris, the city of Edith Piaf, the artist who “radically shaped” her. In the evenings, she sang and waited on tables in bars; during the day, she immersed herself in the world of French chanson, in the songs of broken lives, yet celebrating life and love – emerging from the deepest pain. When Katharine Mehrling sings them, she is also telling her own story.
A major accomplishment mirroring her passion for Edith Piaf were the two concerts on Piaf’s 100th birthday at the Komische Oper, accompanied by a large orchestra – with her guest of honour from Paris, Charles Dumont, Piaf’s last composer. After Paris, she went to New York, where she studied for a few semesters at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute and sang in Harlem jazz clubs. “My instinct usually led me to where I needed to be” – and with this instinct, Katharine Mehrling came to Berlin in 2000 – and stayed. Her journey from the smallest theatres in Berlin to the renowned Komische Oper began here, thus transforming into a “stage star,” a “chanson icon” (BZ).
Together with the legendary jazz clarinetist Rolf Kühn, Katharine Mehrling wrote and produced her album Am Rande der Nacht with her own songs. Her lyrics are poetic, provocative, and wise. With Straßen von Berlin, she wrote, together with her friend Paul Hankinson, a Berlin anthem about loneliness in an anonymous big city.
