Turid Karlsen was born in Oslo, Norway; studied with Mija Besselink in Maastricht, the Netherlands; and Ingrid Bjoner in Oslo. She has been a member of the Opera Ensemble of Germany's Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe (1985-1992) and Oper der Bundesstadt Bonn(1992-1997).

Early roles included most of the main Mozart roles, Violetta in La Traviata and Mimi in La Boheme, eventually moving to the more dramatic soprano repertoire: Salome, Il Trovatore (Leonora), Fidelio (Leonore), the Marschallin (Der Rosenkavalier), Rosalinde (Die Fledermaus), Ariadne auf Naxos, Arabella, Turandot, Lohengrin(Elsa),Der Fliegende Holländer (Senta), the latter earning her the 2004 Kirsten Flagstad Prize for her excellent performance at the Norwegian Opera.

She has worked with such conductors as Daniel Barenboim, Dennis Russell Davies, Andreas Delfs, John DeMain, Hartmut Haenchen, Lawrence Foster, Iliahu Inbal, Leif Segerstam, Michael Tilson Thomas, Placido Domingo and Kent Nagano. She has performed at the Los Angeles, Montreal, Palm Beach, Orlando, Quebec, Madison and Dallas Operas; Opera Pacific; as well as the major houses of Madrid, Barcelona, Zürich, Luzern, Berlin, Munich, Hannover, Hamburg, Amsterdam and Stockholm. In 2006 she had huge success in Göteborg, Sweden as Turandot, the first soprano to sing the role there since Birgit Nilsson.

In 2008 her first-ever Isolde in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde in concert in Schloß Neuschwanstein with the Stuttgart Philharmonic and then staged at the Stadttheater Bielefeld won unanimous critical and public acclaim. She reprises the role at the Staatstheater Wiesbaden in March 2009.

In addition, Ms. Karlsen's considerable concert repertoire includes Beethoven's Missa Solemnis and Ninth Symphony; Mahler's Second and Eighth Symphonies (sopranos #1 and #2), the latter performed at the Konzerthaus Berlin, Canada's Lanaudiere Festival and before 12,000 spectators and on a "live" North American broadcast commemorating
the 400th anniversary of Quebec. She is also in frequent demand for the Requiems of Britten, Verdi and Dvorak; and Janacek's Glagolitic Mass.

Since October 2008, Turid Karlsen is Professor at "Hamburg Musikhochschule".