[3] After working as an investment advisor for four years, she decided to pursue her voice studies, and continued at the Vienna Academy of Music, with teachers including Erik Werba, Waldemar Kmentt,and privately with Carol Blaickner-Mayo; and in Berlin with Hanne-Lore Kuhse.
[1] Watson began her stage career as a mezzo-soprano at the Theater Aachen in 1992, followed by a guest contract at the Aalto Theatre in Essen in 1995, and then as an ensemble member at the Leipzig Opera, where she performed Wagnerian roles such as Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde and Venus in Tannhäuser.
[3] She subsequently appeared as Brünnhilde at many of the world's great opera houses, including at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, even in a nine-hour compilation of all the Ring in one day.
The credibility of her portrayals and her vocal bravura led to engagements worldwide, in Munich, Berlin, Paris, Madrid and Barcelona, at La Scala in Milan, Florence, Bologna, Amsterdam, Los Angeles and at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
She has worked with a conductors including Claudio Abbado, Bertrand de Billy, Daniele Gatti, Valery Gergiev, Hartmut Haenchen, James Levine, Zubin Mehta, Kent Nagano, Antonio Pappano, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Christian Thielemann.
[7] Watson is also successful as a concert singer, performing in Verdi's Messa da Requiem, and also pieces of the Second Viennese School such as Alban Berg's Seven Early Songs and Schönberg's Gurre-Lieder.