Anja Harteros. Piotr Beczała’s Lohengrin and Anja Harteros’ Elsa are equal in pure and golden tone and look a dream. | O | S Eventually, her music teacher at the Wüllenweber-Gymnasium in Bergneustadt, August Wilhelm Welp, noticed her considerable talent and recommended that she be professionally educated in singing. The wind whips, lightening cuts through the roaring skies. “It doesn’t make me feel wonderful. I put it into the music, and something really special happened with the audience. The conductor Christian Thielemann put it simply: “The voice is one of the most beautiful which has been ever around.”, In the great operas of Verdi, Puccini, Strauss and Wagner, Ms. Harteros is as good — as powerful yet lyrical in her singing, as sensitive in her acting — as anyone in the world. It was part of Ms. Harteros’s careful pivot from the light, agile heroines of Mozart to Wagner’s Sieglinde, Puccini’s Tosca and Verdi’s Aida. | G Harteros triumphs as Sieglinde in Berlin. Director Nicholas Hytner (revival direction by Paul Higgins) takes an interesting approach to the piece, which while it doesn't at all neglect its Grand Opera status, does reinterpret many characters' motivations and attitudes. Anja Harteros - a cancellitis chronicle. During the Munich Opera Festival of 2010, I had the opportunity of interviewing one of the most exciting and important lyric sopranos of today: Anja Harteros. Anja Harteros' first performances were in music institute concerts and in a school production of The Marriage of Figaro in 1990, as the Gräfin. What’s Keeping One of Opera’s Greatest Sopranos From Singing? They embraced her, and the theater quickly became her home base, though she feared her secure position would be threatened when the administration changed in 2008. | The Sad Corner, Born: July 23, 1972 - Bergneustadt, Germany. | H Coming projects will bring the artist to the Salzburg Festival 2006 Elettra/Idomeneo, the Opéra National de Paris Donna Anna (Don Giovanni), to the Semperoper in Dresden Desdemona (Otello), to the Bayerische Staatsoper München Arabella, Contessa, Fjordiligi, Violetta and to the Wiener Staatsoper Contessa, Donna Anna. She entered the conservatory in Cologne, and in her early 20s joined the ensemble at the theater in nearby Gelsenkirchen, before moving on to a larger house in Bonn. When we first meet the love of his life, Elsa (admirably sung and acted by German soprano, Anja Harteros, also making her Bayreuth début) - the poor victim of an intrigue by Count Telramund and his hateful wife-cum-witch, Ortrud - she’s being dragged to the stake by a couple of Satanists for her Christian beliefs. “But in the inside, you can feel the volcano, and the fire that she doesn’t live, really, or let out, really. Her performances of these queenly characters are memorable because of the passion quaking beneath her serene, regal bearing. But from early on, she was encouraged to explore her voice. Harteros was born in Bergneustadt, North Rhine-Westphalia, to a Greek father and a German mother and has two siblings, Alexia and Georgios. | V | J After highly acclaimed performances of "Tosca" in Munich Anja Harteros, Jonas Kaufmann and Bryn Terfel will join each other again on July 22 and 24, this time for the Opera Gala in Baden-Baden. Contributed by, Recordings of Bach Cantatas & Other Vocal Works, G.F. Handel: Opera Alcina, HWV 34 [Alcina], Anja Harteros (Official Website) [English/German] Her big blue eyes are full of what the stage director Christof Loy called in an interview “something fragile always.” Singing “Tu che le vanità,” Elisabetta’s climactic aria near the end of Verdi’s “Don Carlo,” Ms. Harteros makes sensational drama out of balancing almost martial control with an undercurrent of rhythmic freedom, her pianissimos seeming to hold back floods of forte. After completing high school in 1991, Harteros continued her voice studies at the Cologne music school under Liselotte Hammes at the Hochschule für Musik Köln. | E Her Ortrud dominated the stage, her mezzo still strong, although the treacherous final scene brought her to … Anja Harteros. As a child, she was encouraged by her parents to pursue classical music and singing. She turned down a prestigious offer to sing Musetta, a supporting part in “La Bohème,” in London; the lead, Mimì, was already in her repertory. The Berlin Staatsoper's season was supposed to launch last Saturday with Anja Harteros, a full orchestra, and a long-sold-out evening of Italian operatic arias. | C Main Page Pointed out should be her cooperation with conductor Zubin Mehta - in autumn 2008, Anja Harteros debuted as Elisabetta within the new production of Don Carlos on the occasion of the opening of the new opera house in Oslo. It was a free feeling.”. Anja Harteros has also given concerts and Liederrecitals all over Germany, as well as in Boston, Florence, London, Edinburgh, Vicenza and Tel Aviv. “But he said, ‘You are a wonderful singer and so important to this house, and we want to continue this work and deepen it.’”. The German soprano, Anja Harteros, was born to a Greek father and a German mother in Bergneustadt, and has two siblings, Alexia and Georgios. Categoria: Soprano . Cast: Anja Harteros (Alcina), Vesselina Kasarova (Ruggiero), Kristina Hammarström (Bradamante), Veronica Cangemi (Morgana), Benjamin Bruns (Oronte), Adam Plachetka (Melisso), Alois Mühlbacher (Oberto). “She was an artist that did not arrive at the competition with a kind of buzz around her,” said Anthony Freud, one of the jurors that year and now the general director of the Lyric Opera of Chicago. Anja Harteros received the “Meistersinger-Medaille” at the Bayerische Staatsoper following the performance on Nov. 3, 2019; the award was donated by the Freunde des Nationaltheaters e.V. Conductor: Marc Minkowski with Les Musiciens du Louvre. Winning the Cardiff competition “was like a passport,” opening her international career, Ms. Harteros said. Yes, reading that isn’t very interesting. Customer help - Advice Service efficace et rapide, joignable par tel +33 1 53 59 39 29 ou Email. Both works were by composers very much ahead of their times. This commitment to her family has earned Ms. Harteros the admiration of many in the opera world, even as they regret the performances they and their audiences are missing. ... She reacts then as if she was a mother and she has to chose between the child and the husband. | F You can become typecast, or take on roles that are too big for you. As far as I know (correct me if I'm wrong), only three of her stage works and one concert have been preserved on video. Giuseppe Verdi anticipated the sedition in the hearts of his characters in the revolting nature. Description Act 1 Act 2 Act 3. And you can’t find your way back. It was recently reported that Harteros has stopped singing {…} She sang Zerlina in a school production of “Don Giovanni” when she was just 13, and while she made a mistake — the performance even needed to be briefly stopped — it was ineffably right. What an opening! She is a German of Greek extraction. Ms. Harteros as the Countess in “Le Nozze di Figaro” at the Met in 2003. Credit Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera . Ms. Harteros as the Countess in “Le Nozze di Figaro” at the Met in 2003. The German soprano was nothing short of sensational on a starry Saturday opening night of a revival of the Robert Carsen production of “Tosca” at the Zurich Opera. As a child, she was encouraged by her parents to pursue classical music and singing. The conductor Christian Thielemann describes her voice as “one of the most beautiful which has been ever around.”. “I can’t honestly say I was sitting there saying, ‘This lady is going to become a great Elsa or Leonora or Elisabetta di Valois,” Mr. Freud recalled, referring to some heavier Wagner and Verdi roles in which Ms. Harteros has recently triumphed. As a child, she was encouraged by her parents to pursue classical music and singing. But interviews with past and present collaborators point to a major reason for the unusual limitations on her dazzling career: Her husband, who is also an artistic mentor of hers, has been ailing for some time, so she is unwilling to venture far from where they live, outside Cologne, Germany. | T On Friday afternoon, the Staatsoper sent out a curt press release - the concert was cancelled due to illness. Before that I posted nothing about her. Her voice was full and creamy, but it didn’t give away the dramatic depths it would be plumbing a decade or two hence. Work description. Since then, Anja Harteros has been hosting at all important national and international opera houses from New York (Metropolitan Opera): Contessa (Le nozze di Figaro), Donna Anna (Don Giovanni), Lyon: Fjordiligi (Cosi fan tutte), Amsterdam: Contessa (Le nozze di Figaro), San Diego: Amelia (Simon Boccanegra), Violetta (La Traviata), Tokyo: Eva (Meistersinger), Dresden: Fjordiligi (Cosi fan tutte, Mimi (La Bohème), Frankfurt: Fjordiligi (Cosi fan tutte), at the State Opera of Hamburg: Eva (Die Meistersinger), State Opera of Berlin: Contessa (Le nozze di Figaro) and at the Wiener Staatsoper: Eva (Die Meistersinger), Mimi (La Bohème), at the Bayerische Staatsoper München: Agathe (Der Freischütz), Freia (Das Rheingold), Mimi (La Bohème), Fjordiligi (Cosi fan tutte), Contessa (Le nozze di Figaro), at the Deutsche Oper Berlin: Mimi (La Bohème), at the Edinburgh Festival: Fjordiligi (Cosi fan tutte) as well as at the Salzburger Festspiele: Elettra (Idomeneo). The soprano is celebrating her 20th stage anniversary at Bayerische Staatsoper and the prize honors her outstanding work for the Munich opera house. When I went to Munich to see Lohengrin in 2009, I remember the soprano was not Anja. | M Source: Farao Classics Website; Wikipedia Website In 1986, she started voice training under Astrid Huber-Aulmann in Gummersbach, … The German soprano, Anja Harteros, was born to a Greek father and a German mother in Bergneustadt, and has two siblings, Alexia and Georgios. MUNICH — The joy of Elisabeth’s entrance aria in Wagner’s “Tannhäuser” recedes for a line of sadness as she recalls her beloved’s departure. At the age of 14 (in 1986), she started voice training under Astrid Huber-Aulmann in Gummersbach, concurrently with her schooling. Biographies of Performers: “That’s the hardest part of the career,” she said. Aleksandrs Antonenko as Otello and Anja Harteros as Desdemona in the Royal Opera's Otello. But it is what it is.”, Mr. Thielemann, one of the world’s leading Strauss and Wagner conductors, expressed similar feelings: “If you have somebody at home you want to take care of, and need to,” he said, “it’s more than logical that you do it.”. International Agency Classical music and opera specialist for over 20 years. | Acronyms “Because I think it would be a great artistic event to have her back on the Met stage.”, Speaking in May over lunch at a restaurant here, Ms. Harteros, 44, politely but firmly deflected certain questions about her personal life. In 1999, though she didn’t much like stilted aria contests, she entered the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition and won a surprising victory. Ms. Harteros as Amelia, with Plácido Domingo in the title role of “Simon Boccanegra” in 2009. “You have sleepless nights. Anja Harteros has appeared with many renowned conductors including such as Zubin Mehta, James Levine, Jesús López-Cobos, Peter Schneider, Sylvain Cambreling, Ingo Metzmacher, Markus Stenz, Ivor Bolton, András Schiff and Stefan Soltesz. “These are private reasons,” she said, “that I didn’t want such big travel, with big distance from home.”. I think that is why Anja is prudent.”. Listening to her and experiencing her is quite a different story. “For her, I would make it work.”. Why has she not performed since 2008 at the Metropolitan Opera, where she had acclaimed runs over several seasons? Born in 1972 near Cologne, the middle of three children of a Greek father and German mother, Ms. Harteros grew up playing the violin. | Q | P | Y For me, it's hard to understand why one of the leading sopranos of our time, the great Anja Harteros, a lady who is the owner of a bone-chilling, powerful, extremely beautiful voice, is not more represented on video media. Anja Harteros (born 23 July 1972) is a German soprano.She has a vast repertoire encompassing Mozart, 19th-century German and Italian operas, and Lieder. Deutsche Oper Berlin celebrated the opening of its new season with a special concert in Berlin's Philharmonie with two works for orchestra and voices, one familiar, another less so. The German soprano, Anja Harteros, was born to a Greek father and a German mother in Bergneustadt, and has two siblings, Alexia and Georgios. Anja Harteros, whose warm intonation, lightly floated high lines, tidy trills, and musical restraint amply compensated. Soprano Anja Harteros’s Elsa grew vocally from act to act, her bridal chamber scene crowning a superb performance. ... his character is the archetypal jealous Italian husband. This was the major breakthrough for her career. Nikolaus Bachler, the Staatsoper’s director, called her “one of the major singers of our time.”, “I always compare her to a river, in her clearness and her purity,” Mr. Bachler said in an interview. A turning point, when you could say she went from house soprano to house star, came in 2009, when she was paired with the galvanizing tenor Jonas Kaufmann in a new production of Wagner’s “Lohengrin.” (“A Hollywood moment,” Mr. Bachler called it.) Waltraud Meier still has surprising reserves of power at the scything top of her voice as Ortrud. “And the feeling I had when I did ‘Ave Maria,’ that was so special. Like an outcry the elemental force of the orchestra shatters the silence, the storm on the coast of Cyprus rages incessantly. | R First and foremost is the relationship between Elisabeth de Valois (Anja Harteros) and Don Carlos (Jonas Kaufmann). | Missing Biographies The soprano Anja Harteros, whose performance of the role at the Bayerische Staatsoper here will be streamed at staatsoper.tv on Sunday, July 9, makes of that passing moment an entire anatomy of melancholy. Hers is an Italianate stage bearing, no matter the Greek and German parentage, and she inhabits Verdi’s Elisabeth (Elisabetta, heard in January) and this Mozart snugly indeed, a Fach-defying professional. Mr. Thielemann said that he had recommended Puccini’s Madama Butterfly to her and thinks that her interpretations of the mature, subtle women of Strauss — the title character in “Ariadne auf Naxos,” the Marschallin in “Der Rosenkavalier,” the Countess in “Capriccio” — will be touchstones in the years to come. Waltraud Meier returned in triumph to Bayreuth. Her husband, who is also an artistic mentor of hers, has been ailing for some time, so she is unwilling to venture far … She transforms before our eyes from a cheerful girl into a woman who’s peered into the heart of grief. | Z “It’s mainly a lyric voice that slowly is gaining in power and in potential for bigger and bigger dramatic roles,” said Mr. Pappano, who cast her, alongside Mr. Kaufmann, in an atmospheric recent recording of “Aida.”, Donald Runnicles, the music director of the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, called her embrace of this repertory “a door you can ecstatically walk through — but can you walk back? “But she can grow, like rivers can grow, in a second — and go back, in a second, to a calm, shining beauty.”. It records the work of artists in over 900 theatres, and publishes season information to … Anja Harteros - Soprano (Farao Classics), Terms of Use Why, then, have her appearances outside of a small circle of theaters in and near Germany been so limited over the past decade? | B Jonas Kaufmann and Anja Harteros as an alienated husband and wife in Amélie Niermeyer’s production of Verdi’s “Otello” at the Bavarian State Opera. “You need someone with experience,” he said of these characters, “who dominates the scene without doing too much.”, The question, of course, is how widely Ms. Harteros will be able to range in the time she has left, given her personal circumstances. From 1990 her musical education was entrusted to the technically-experienced conductor and repetiteur Wolfgang Kastorp at the Cologne Opera, who accompanied her in a series of concerts. Anja Harteros' repertoire includes the roles of Mimì (La bohème), Desdemona (Otello), Micaëla (Carmen), Eva (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg), Elisabeth (Tannhäuser), Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte), Contessa (Le nozze di Figaro), Arabella (Arabella), Alice Ford (Falstaff) , and Alcina. In a letter dated 1927, Richard Strauss begs Hugo von Hofmannsthal to write him a new libretto: “You can even make me a second Rosenkavalier if you don’t have anything better in mind.”. Anja Harteros, front, and Piotr Beczala in Yuval Sharon's new staging of Wagner's "Lohengrin" at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany. | K ... the husband-and … In 1992 she gave her first concert at the Kantonsschule Schwyz in Switzerland. | L 1 di 10 . | A Ms. Harteros as Donna Leonora, with Jonas Kaufmann as Don Alvaro, in “La Forza del Destino” in 2013. Due to her excellent singing and acting debuts in the season 2004-2005 at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich (in the role of Desdemona (Otello), Alice Ford (Falstaff) as well as the title-roles in George Frideric Handel's Alcina (new production at the opera festival in Munich in 2005) and Arabella), Anja Harteros was honoured by the audience of the Bayerische Staatsoper with the Prize of the Münchener Opernfestspiele. "German soprano Anja Harteros has withdrawn from singing the role of Elizabeth of Valois in Don Carlo for the final four performances in May (15, 18, 21, and 25 May).Anja is not able at this point to stay abroad for an extended period of time as originally planned. “I’ve told her this: I would turn the schedule inside out to make it possible, even on short notice,” said Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager. And this makes the personality so rich.”. | N As a child, she was encouraged by her parents to pursue classical music and singing. Anja Harteros. She is represented by Zemsky/Green management, whose roster includes such outstanding sopranos as Anja Harteros, Kristine Opolais, Eva Maria Westbroek and Pretty Yende. Harteros, Gubanova, Kaufmann, Terfel: the Baden-Baden-Gala 2016 will be televised. | D Her most important debut came just months after the Cardiff competition here in Munich, where Peter Jonas, who had also been on the Cardiff jury, was the Bayerische Staatsoper’s artistic leader and Zubin Mehta was music director. Watching the film of Lohengrin may have been my first experience of her. The soprano Anja Harteros. Lohengrin without the swan is like Hamlet without Yorick’s skull, so we feared for the worst until Sir Donald Runnicles began the overture with glistening, feather-light strings playing the Grail music, and from that moment on the evening, in spite of technical problems, was a musical triumph. She has a warm association with San Diego Opera where she sang her first Violetta in La traviata in 2004, her first Ameila in Simon Boccanegra in 2005 and will sing her first Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier in 2011. “From the outside there is purity,” Mr. Bachler said. Don't fall off your chair. | X Her restrictions on her travel, along with her lack of a large body of recordings — a deal with Sony fizzled out years ago — have made Ms. Harteros perhaps the most elusive important singer in the world, a star who can seem like a secret. | W “I felt that even if I failed,” she said, “it was not like playing violin in front of an audience. She rejected major theaters that wanted to build her up in uncongenial minor roles, preferring to sing the characters she loved in smaller houses. Ms. Harteros as Elisabeth, with Georg Zeppenfeld as Hermann, in “Tannhäuser” in May. There are not terribly many more major roles for her to explore; no one expects her essentially lyric instrument to push much further, into dramatic parts like Salome or Isolde. I don’t want to live that again, but it makes me strong, to know that in difficult times you can reach very high points.”. In the summer of 1999, Anja Harteros won the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition (she became the first German to win this competetion), which led to many invitations for concerts and guest performances. “I have not lost hope, and I believe she will come back to the Met,” Mr. Gelb said. © 2000-2021 Bach Cantatas Website. Christian Thielemann conducts a luxurious reading of the opera and the cast is to match. “Her singing was beautifully cool, clear-toned and full bodied,” Anthony Tommasini wrote in The New York Times of a Met “Don Giovanni” in 2004. Lieberenz/ullstein bild, via Getty Images. the 29 of June, 2021. the 04 of July, 2021. the 08 of July, 2021. the 13 of July, 2021. the 31 of July, 2021 Anja Harteros. A young lyric soprano, Ms. Harteros was at that point concentrating on Mozart and the lighter Verdi; one of the things she sang in the final round in Cardiff was the famous “Sempre libera” from “La Traviata,” with its insouciant coloratura. | U But she recalled the tension of making tough choices as a newcomer. She recalled a rare visit to London, for Verdi’s “Otello” in 2012, a period she called “maybe the hardest or second-hardest time of my life.”, “I went onstage and did Desdemona,” she said. | Privacy Policy | I By Ako Imamura, 08 September 2016. Eventually, her music teacher at the Wüllenweber-Gymnasium in Bergneustadt, August Wilhelm Welp, noticed her considerable talent and recommended that she be professionally educated in singing. Explanation After her 1996 exams, she was given a permanent position with the ensemble at the opera in Bonn, where she still works. Anja Harteros (Soprano) Born: July 23, 1972 - Bergneustadt, Germany. Anja Harteros. Sinking to its depths, its texture is like weathered velvet. Anja Harteros (Soprano) - Short Biography. It didn't. I needed to learn to say no and to stay with my no.”. Just before her final exams, she was employed as a permanent member of the ensemble at the Schillertheater in Gelsenkirchen and Wuppertal. “She’s a very responsible person, and she has a responsibility: end of story,” said Antonio Pappano, the music director of the Royal Opera in London. The opera world, for its part, seems to have tacitly agreed to be patient. A young lyric soprano, Ms. Harteros was at that point concentrating on Mozart and the lighter Verdi; one of the things she sang in the final round in Cardiff was the famous “Sempre libera” from “La Traviata,” with its insouciant coloratura. | Copyright Policy As the Countess, German soprano Anja Harteros was renewing her partnership with Keenlyside in July of this year at Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich. Anja Harteros. Why has she developed a reputation for cancellations? OPERA GIFT Give concert and opera tickets in prestigious venues ! Operabase has documented operatic activity worldwide since 1996, with over 500,000 performances on file. Her voice suddenly turns gray and hazy, without losing its steely core. Her original singing teacher, Huber-Aulmann, continued to teach her until early 1996, and Harteros accompanied Huber-Aulmann on concerts tours in 1993 and 1994 to Russia and the USA, which attracted lots of attention to the singer. “When Herr Bachler began, I was so frightened,” she said. She rarely faltered in those early years as she traveled from San Diego to New York to Tokyo to Vienna. 2013 for me was the year of Anja Harteros. Her career took off after she won the 1999 Cardiff Singer of the World competition.