[1] She received her vocal training at the Musikhochschule Hamburg,[2] where Judith Beckmann and Annie Schoonus were her singing teachers.
In 1995, she won first prize at the Bundeswettbewerb Gesang in Berlin; in 1998, she was a prizewinner of the International Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition in Vienna.
[3] There she appeared among others as Micaëla in Carmen, Pamina in the Magic Flute, Marguerite in Faust, Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, as Contessa in Le nozze di Figaro and in the title role of the opera Arabella.
A highlight of her career was the interpretation of the role of Eve in Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, which she sang at the Bayreuth Festival in 2008 and 2009.
Guest opera performances have taken Kaune to the Opéra National de Paris, the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels (1999/2000 season as Contessa in Le nozze di Figaro), to the Oper Frankfurt, the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie (as Agathe in Der Freischütz), the Hamburg State Opera, the Semperoper Dresden (2001, as Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte), to the Vlaamse Opera Antwerp, the Bavarian State Opera Munich (1999, as Agathe; 2000, as Micaëla; 2002, as Donna Elvira), to the Salzburg Festival (2001, 2006), at the Berliner Festwochen and the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival.