Anja Harteros - a cancellitis chronicle. 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. | C 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. It didn't. Anja Harteros (Soprano) Born: July 23, 1972 - Bergneustadt, Germany. Piotr Beczała’s Lohengrin and Anja Harteros’ Elsa are equal in pure and golden tone and look a dream. Main Page Anja Harteros. “These are private reasons,” she said, “that I didn’t want such big travel, with big distance from home.”. 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. | R “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. She rejected major theaters that wanted to build her up in uncongenial minor roles, preferring to sing the characters she loved in smaller houses. 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. “And the feeling I had when I did ‘Ave Maria,’ that was so special. | N Customer help - Advice Service efficace et rapide, joignable par tel +33 1 53 59 39 29 ou Email. She transforms before our eyes from a cheerful girl into a woman who’s peered into the heart of grief. | Privacy Policy “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? It was a free feeling.”. “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. The German soprano, Anja Harteros, was born to a Greek father and a German mother in Bergneustadt, and has two siblings, Alexia and Georgios. “You have sleepless nights. 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. | A 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. Description Act 1 Act 2 Act 3. “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. Soprano Anja Harteros’s Elsa grew vocally from act to act, her bridal chamber scene crowning a superb performance. Her Ortrud dominated the stage, her mezzo still strong, although the treacherous final scene brought her to … 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. 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. 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. Source: Farao Classics Website; Wikipedia Website Her voice was full and creamy, but it didn’t give away the dramatic depths it would be plumbing a decade or two hence. Her voice suddenly turns gray and hazy, without losing its steely core. Listening to her and experiencing her is quite a different story. 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. Harteros triumphs as Sieglinde in Berlin. Anja Harteros. Sinking to its depths, its texture is like weathered velvet. Work description. 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. 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. | E | K The soprano Anja Harteros. 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. Giuseppe Verdi anticipated the sedition in the hearts of his characters in the revolting nature. You can become typecast, or take on roles that are too big for you. | Z Just before her final exams, she was employed as a permanent member of the ensemble at the Schillertheater in Gelsenkirchen and Wuppertal. “From the outside there is purity,” Mr. Bachler said. Why has she developed a reputation for cancellations? 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. | U Waltraud Meier returned in triumph to Bayreuth. Why, then, have her appearances outside of a small circle of theaters in and near Germany been so limited over the past decade? 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. Christian Thielemann conducts a luxurious reading of the opera and the cast is to match. Why has she not performed since 2008 at the Metropolitan Opera, where she had acclaimed runs over several seasons? 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. I think that is why Anja is prudent.”. Lieberenz/ullstein bild, via Getty Images. | T Anja Harteros. First and foremost is the relationship between Elisabeth de Valois (Anja Harteros) and Don Carlos (Jonas Kaufmann). “But she can grow, like rivers can grow, in a second — and go back, in a second, to a calm, shining beauty.”. I put it into the music, and something really special happened with the audience. Anja Harteros has also given concerts and Liederrecitals all over Germany, as well as in Boston, Florence, London, Edinburgh, Vicenza and Tel Aviv. “I have not lost hope, and I believe she will come back to the Met,” Mr. Gelb said. This was the major breakthrough for her career. The wind whips, lightening cuts through the roaring skies. “That’s the hardest part of the career,” she said. The German soprano, Anja Harteros, was born to a Greek father and a German mother in Bergneustadt, and has two siblings, Alexia and Georgios. “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. Before that I posted nothing about her. 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. Ms. Harteros as Amelia, with Plácido Domingo in the title role of “Simon Boccanegra” in 2009. | I 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. | F On Friday afternoon, the Staatsoper sent out a curt press release - the concert was cancelled due to illness. And you can’t find your way back. | B Anja Harteros. | Copyright Policy | Q As a child, she was encouraged by her parents to pursue classical music and singing. Anja Harteros. | J But from early on, she was encouraged to explore her voice. When I went to Munich to see Lohengrin in 2009, I remember the soprano was not Anja. “But in the inside, you can feel the volcano, and the fire that she doesn’t live, really, or let out, really. “But he said, ‘You are a wonderful singer and so important to this house, and we want to continue this work and deepen it.’”. Waltraud Meier still has surprising reserves of power at the scything top of her voice as Ortrud. Conductor: Marc Minkowski with Les Musiciens du Louvre. | O | W Anja Harteros. Her husband, who is also an artistic mentor of hers, has been ailing for some time, so she is unwilling to venture far … “When Herr Bachler began, I was so frightened,” she said. Ms. Harteros as the Countess in “Le Nozze di Figaro” at the Met in 2003. Credit Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera . 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. Contributed by, Recordings of Bach Cantatas & Other Vocal Works, G.F. Handel: Opera Alcina, HWV 34 [Alcina], Anja Harteros (Official Website) [English/German] It records the work of artists in over 900 theatres, and publishes season information to … 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. 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. As the Countess, German soprano Anja Harteros was renewing her partnership with Keenlyside in July of this year at Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich. “I felt that even if I failed,” she said, “it was not like playing violin in front of an audience. Anja Harteros (Soprano) - Short Biography. “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. 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. 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. I needed to learn to say no and to stay with my no.”. She is represented by Zemsky/Green management, whose roster includes such outstanding sopranos as Anja Harteros, Kristine Opolais, Eva Maria Westbroek and Pretty Yende. 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. Watching the film of Lohengrin may have been my first experience of her. 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. What’s Keeping One of Opera’s Greatest Sopranos From Singing? | P She rarely faltered in those early years as she traveled from San Diego to New York to Tokyo to Vienna. Aleksandrs Antonenko as Otello and Anja Harteros as Desdemona in the Royal Opera's Otello. © 2000-2021 Bach Cantatas Website. 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.) But she recalled the tension of making tough choices as a newcomer. What an opening! 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. 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). As a child, she was encouraged by her parents to pursue classical music and singing. In 1986, she started voice training under Astrid Huber-Aulmann in Gummersbach, … 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.”. “It doesn’t make me feel wonderful. 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. Don't fall off your chair. Born in 1972 near Cologne, the middle of three children of a Greek father and German mother, Ms. Harteros grew up playing the violin. 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. 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. 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.”. 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. 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 29 of June, 2021. the 04 of July, 2021. the 08 of July, 2021. the 13 of July, 2021. the 31 of July, 2021 Winning the Cardiff competition “was like a passport,” opening her international career, Ms. Harteros said. Yes, reading that isn’t very interesting. Biographies of Performers: In 1992 she gave her first concert at the Kantonsschule Schwyz in Switzerland. ... the husband-and … | L OPERA GIFT Give concert and opera tickets in prestigious venues ! It was recently reported that Harteros has stopped singing {…} At the age of 14 (in 1986), she started voice training under Astrid Huber-Aulmann in Gummersbach, concurrently with her schooling. 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. International Agency Classical music and opera specialist for over 20 years. Anja Harteros' first performances were in music institute concerts and in a school production of The Marriage of Figaro in 1990, as the Gräfin. “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. 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. Harteros was born in Bergneustadt, North Rhine-Westphalia, to a Greek father and a German mother and has two siblings, Alexia and Georgios. Ms. Harteros as Elisabeth, with Georg Zeppenfeld as Hermann, in “Tannhäuser” in May. | D | S 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. Anja Harteros - Soprano (Farao Classics), Terms of Use | Missing Biographies | H 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. 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. Her performances of these queenly characters are memorable because of the passion quaking beneath her serene, regal bearing. Categoria: Soprano . By Ako Imamura, 08 September 2016. 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. | Acronyms And this makes the personality so rich.”. 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. The German soprano, Anja Harteros, was born to a Greek father and a German mother in Bergneustadt, and has two siblings, Alexia and Georgios. | Y ... She reacts then as if she was a mother and she has to chose between the child and the husband. Both works were by composers very much ahead of their times. “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. 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. Her career took off after she won the 1999 Cardiff Singer of the World competition. The conductor Christian Thielemann describes her voice as “one of the most beautiful which has been ever around.”. | V 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.”. As a child, she was encouraged by her parents to pursue classical music and singing. 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. 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. 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. 2013 for me was the year of Anja Harteros. Harteros, Gubanova, Kaufmann, Terfel: the Baden-Baden-Gala 2016 will be televised. Anja Harteros, front, and Piotr Beczala in Yuval Sharon's new staging of Wagner's "Lohengrin" at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany.