"an imposing voice with strong colours"
(BBC Music Magazine, 10/2006)
“The absolutely dazzling Eva sung by Anja Harteros outshines in our memories
(what a phrase in the quintet! What a tone! What an elegant duet with Sachs) all
the other ones since Grümmer – as does David interpreted by Rainer Trost, deft, free,
sharp and so charming (despite his height)”
(Classica-Répertoire, July-August 2006 (Transl. from French))
ONE OF BILLBOARD’S ‘10 FACES TO WATCH’ IN 2006
ANJA HARTEROS
SIGNS AN EXCLUSIVE CONTRACT
TO RECORD FOR RCA RED SEAL
German Soprano’s Label Debut Recording, Featuring Arias By Mozart & Haydn, To Be Released Worldwide In Summer 2006
One of opera’s most acclaimed and glamorous new stars, soprano Anja Harteros has signed an exclusive contract to record for the RCA Red Seal label of Sony BMG Masterworks, Gilbert Hetherwick, President of Masterworks, announced today. Harteros’ first recording for the label will feature Mozart concert arias and selections from Le nozze di Figaro, Così fan tutte and Idomeneo, as well as Haydn’s “Scena di Berenice” for soprano and orchestra. Pinchas Steinberg conducts the Vienna Symphony Orchestra on the recording, which is scheduled for released worldwide in summer 2006.
The 32-year-old Harteros captured the world’s attention in 1999 when she became the first German singer to take the top prize in the BBC “Singer of the World” Competition in Cardiff, Wales – the same award that launched the international careers of Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Karita Mattila. Critics have hailed the soprano’s subsequent debuts at the Vienna Staatsoper, the Salzburg Festival and New York’s Metropolitan Opera. In its year-end 2005 issue, Billboard selected Harteros as the only classical artist to be among its “10 Faces to Watch” in 2006.
“Anja has an incredible voice, but she also possesses a stage charisma and a charm that we believe will connect directly to the hearts of both the opera aficionados and the broader public,” Hetherwick said, in announcing the soprano’s signing. “We believe that, for her, the stars are aligning for a major career.”
Following her 2003 Met debut in Le nozze di Figaro, New York magazine wrote, “Anja Harteros’ coolly contained but easily wounded Countess is sung with a tear in the voice and exquisite vocal control.” When she returned to the Met in Don Giovanni, the same critic described the singer’s Donna Anna as “a tall, dark beauty whose smoldering emotions erupt into cascades of gorgeously produced tone, all right on the mark and thrilling to hear.”
Financial Times hailed Harteros’ portrayal of Eva in Die Meistersinger at the Opéra Bastille in Paris as “a model of focused beauty.” After the soprano’s first performances as Violetta in La Traviata at the San Diego Opera, the San Diego Union-Tribune described her as “exceptionally beguiling, both vocally and visually … There was no mistaking the exceptional quality of her voice … it flowed with a liquid luster … With her combination of vulnerability and sensuality, Harteros was reminiscent of actress Julia Roberts … Harteros was in her own lofty league.”
Born in Bergneustadt near Cologne, Harteros – whose ancestry is Greek – studied at Cologne’s Hochschule für Musik with soprano Lieselotte Hammes. She began her career as a lyric soprano with the opera companies of Gelsenkirchen-Wuppertal and Bonn.
After winning the “Singer of the World” prize, Harteros made a celebrated debut at Munich’s Bayerischen Staatsoper in 2001 as Agathe in Der Freischütz under Zubin Mehta. Puccini’s Mimì served to introduce her to audiences at Vienna’s Staatsoper, where she returned in 2003 as Eva in Die Meistersinger and as Micaëla in Carmen. She now appears regularly at such major international houses as the Met and Berlin’s Deutsche Oper, as well as in Munich and Geneva, and has also made guest appearances with the leading companies in Frankfurt, Lyon, Dresden, Hamburg and Amsterdam, and at the Salzburg and Edinburgh Festivals. Harteros’ diverse repertoire embraces all the major Mozart roles as well as the heroines of Verdi, Wagner, Strauss, Puccini and Handel. It was in the title role of Handel’s Alcina that she made a much-acclaimed debut in the Baroque repertoire at the Bayerischen Staatsoper, where she returns this spring for Così fan tutte. The 2006 Salzburg Festival will feature her debut in Mozart’s Idomeneo.
Anja Harteros is also active in the concert and recital repertoire, and she has performed in recital throughout Germany and in London, Edinburgh, Boston, Florence, Vicenza and Tel Aviv.
MET Opera Review
A MONSTER FROM MOZART, OOZING SEDUCTIVE CHARM
…Following an impressive Met debut earlier this season as Mozart's Countess in ''Le Nozze di Figaro,'' the soprano Anja Harteros excelled as Donna Anna. Her singing was beautifully cool, clear toned and full bodied. She projected a vulnerable, disheveled beauty appropriate to a young woman whose well-planned and comfortable life has been shattered by a brutal intruder, a man she knows she found intriguing.
(The New York Times, March 3, 2004)
Soprano Anja Harteros had a triumphant Met debut as Countess Almaviva last autumn. Now she returns to the company as Donna Anna in the Met's new Don Giovanni.
MARTIN BERNHEIMER catches up with the Mozartean of the moment
It was October 1, the third night of the current Met season, and the bill was Le Nozze di Figaro. But it wasn’t just another Figaro.
Jonathan Miller’s edgy though essentially conventional production, first seen in 1998, had been cleverly reheated by Robin Guarino. James Levine conducted with affectionate savoir-faire. The cast was mostly unfamiliar and, apart from the super-wily Basilio of Michel Sénéchal (seventy-six), mostly young. Graduating to his first title role at the Met, John Relyea made much of Mozart’s macho factotum, complemented by Dorothea Röschmann as an unusually spunky Susanna. It all began nicely.
Then the curtain rose on Act II, and the temperature rose too. Here, pacing the stage as Countess Almaviva, was a little-heralded soprano from Germany, bearing her father’s Greek surname: Anja Harteros. Dark and slender, aristocratic but girlish, nervous yet languid, she seized the moment before she even began to sing. And when she did begin, she stopped the breath — ours, if not hers — with endless streams of limpid tone. “Porgi amor,” about as tough an entry test as any in opera, flowed luxuriously, as did an exalted sense of longing. Harteros painted the text in delicate colors, pointed the pathos with exquisite tenderness. Still, there was nothing fussy, nothing precious, nothing self-conscious in her poise. It wasn’t hard to find traces of a feisty Rosina in this melancholy Countess. The Beaumarchais evolution seemed natural.
Harteros went on to demonstrate a splendid aura of heroic grandeur, a broad dynamic scale and even a reasonable trill in “Dove sono.” In the terzetto, she floated a perfect pair of top Cs and actually added a trace of diminuendo shading. She matched Susanna impulse for witty impulse in the letter duet, and she melted all hearts in the final exultation of reconciliation. Her performance withstood memories of such company paragons as Eleanor Steber, Lisa Della Casa and Carol Vaness.
Looking back on that Figaro, Harteros seems almost surprised by her success. “The experience,” she gushes, “was ganz grandios. It gave me so much pleasure. It’s always exciting to sing in a new house, but after a while one realizes that opera is virtually the same everywhere. I’m at home in the theater. It’s as simple as that. Still, the Met was different. The Betreuung — the support — in this house was really extraordinary. I’m not used to that. It’s unique. Every wish was anticipated, as if someone was reading my eyes. If there was a problem, there immediately was someone to help, to listen. I never enjoyed an experience like this in Europe.” Did she have sufficient rehearsal? The Figaro production, after all, was not new. She pauses. “It was enough. Still, I think I was able to improve from performance to performance.”
Although fluent in at least the four basic languages of opera, Harteros prefers to conduct this interview in German. Precision is important to her. She seems genuinely delighted when complimented on her trill. “I work so hard on that,” she says. “I want to be accurate. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between a trill and a wobble.”
Born thirty-one years ago in the town of Bergneustadt, west of Cologne, Harteros began her career while still a student of soprano Lieselotte Hammes at the Cologne Conservatory. At twenty-three, she joined the roster of the Gelsenkirchen Opera, a solid little company that shared its resources with Wuppertal, an hour away via Autobahn. Her first assignment was Servilia in La Clemenza di Tito. Luckily, she says, she didn’t know how difficult it was. Like Siegfried, she had not yet learned the meaning of fear.
During her apprenticeship, she recalls that she sang everything — even operetta. “It was useful training.” Always concerned with characterization, never just with voice, she enjoyed particular success as the Governess in Britten’s Turn of the Screw. “That was fantastic,” she recalls. “We had to do the opera in German, but it was right for the local audience.” After the premiere, a poll of German critics hailed her as “best young singer in the Rhineland.”
She moved on to the richer roster of Bonn, but after two years she ventured a break with the German ensemble system. “I didn’t want to be tied down anymore.” Her life, and her career, changed drastically in 1999, when she won first prize in the Singer of the World competition in Cardiff. “Of course the contest represented a great stride forward for me. But I didn’t realize it at the time. Honestly, I was surprised to win. I just like to sing. The ultimate importance didn’t dawn on me until offers of engagements began to come in.”
She admits to qualms about being measured against colleagues. “I don’t like that part of a competition. I never went in thinking I had to be better than the others. I suppose it’s like the Olympics. It’s fabulous if you win, but it’s more important just to participate. It’s all very subjective in any case, and one’s form can change from day to day. Singing is very tough, but I’d much rather be a contestant than a judge.”
As her essentially lyric soprano began to take on breadth and weight, she made her debut in Munich as Agathe in Der Freischütz under Zubin Mehta (with Röschmann as Ännchen). She introduced herself to the Vienna Staatsoper as Puccini’s Mimì and returned last season as Eva in Meistersinger. Now major companies everywhere seem to want her. Still, that doesn’t mean she graces only the world’s most glamorous, most prestigious houses. What she sings is as important to her as where she sings.
Although international audiences are likely to catch her these days in Paris or Salzburg or Tokyo, Americans can discover her in Southern California as well as New York. Ian Campbell, impresario of San Diego Opera, first heard Harteros via the Cardiff contest and has been in enlightened pursuit ever since.
“I had seen a video,” he recalls, “and was attracted by the color of the voice, the technical skill, the personality and the musicianship.” He adds a telling afterthought: “She also looked like a diva.”
After a meeting in 2000, Campbell signed her for Violetta in La Traviata this coming May. It will be her first venture as Verdi’s demimondaine, and she says she contemplates it with equal parts ecstasy, curiosity and terror. “It’s an interesting challenge,” she admits, chuckling at her own understatement. “I have days when I think I want to sing nothing but this. Then come days when I know all too well how difficult the role is. It has so many facets. It demands so much passion, and so much technique.” And what about the old theory that a different sort of voice is required for each act? She brushes it aside. “A soprano is a soprano. I have only one voice. Verdi knew what he wanted.” Will she cap Act I with the E-flat the composer never wrote? “No, no, no. Das ist nicht so schön.”
For an ambitious Verdian encore, she is booked to return to San Diego in March 2005, as Amelia Grimaldi in Simon Boccanegra. The spinto repertory looms, and Campbell likes to plan ahead. “Because I believe in her,” he says, “and because San Diego Opera builds relationships with its artists, I wanted to guarantee another appearance as soon as possible.” He acknowledges the perils of her moving too far too fast but remains optimistic. “Because her voice has substance as well as flexibility, there is a danger that she could be asked to perform roles such as Eva in Meistersinger or Elisabeth in Tannhäuser too frequently, at the risk of losing such core roles as the Contessa, Donna Anna and Fiordiligi. But she recognizes this danger without anyone having to warn her. I’m impressed by her common sense about her voice, and that she understands that longevity is important to her career. In a time when many sopranos are indistinguishable, Anja has a personal sound and a special personality that set her apart.”
At the moment, Harteros does list Tannhäuser in her repertory, but she has yet to sing the opera. It will come, she insists, but she’s in no rush. At the time of our talk, her mind wasn’t on Wagner but on Mozart — specifically Don Giovanni. The new production at the Met, which opens on March 1, actually represents her first professional encounter with the opera. “Cross your fingers for me,” she says.
Unlike many a soprano before her, she did not work up to Donna Anna by way of Zerlina or even Donna Elvira. “Actually,” she says, “I did Zerlina once. But that was part of a rather ambitious school project. I was only thirteen. Anna has always attracted me, always. Her sound rings in my ears.”
So do other sounds. Unlike many of her contemporaries who dwell only on the present, she loves to listen to old recordings. “I want to hear what came before me,” she insists. “Of course I’m interested in the wonderful artists who set standards in my Fach — Schwarzkopf, Della Casa, Seefried. But I’m also fascinated by the great singing actresses — Martha Mödl, Astrid Varnay and, of course, Callas. And then there were the wonders of nature, such as Flagstad.…”
Harteros has not yet made commercial recordings of her own. “High time,” I volunteer. “I think so too,” she replies.
Asked about a repertory wish for the future, she doesn’t hesitate. “The Marschallin, in a couple of years.” The Rosenkavalier princess, obviously a close relation to Mozart’s Countess, is often assigned to quasi-Wagnerians at career twilight. Harteros knows, however, that Strauss and Hofmannsthal envisioned their sensitive heroine as a vital woman in her early thirties. “I want to sing it at thirty-six,” she says, “with a voice that sounds like thirty-three.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning critic MARTIN BERNHEIMER covers music in New York for the Financial Times and Opera magazine.
(Martin Bernheimer, Opera News Online, March 2004)
“Anja Harteros’ coolly contained but easily wounded Countess is sung with a tear in the voice and exquisite vocal control.” When she returned to the Met in Don Giovanni, the same critic described the singer’s Donna Anna as “a tall, dark beauty whose smoldering emotions erupt into cascades of gorgeously produced tone, all right on the mark and thrilling to hear.”
(New York Magazine, May and Oct. 2003)
