Anja Harteros

By the time that she had completed her studies at Cologne’s University of Music and Dance in 2000, German soprano Anja Harteros could already look back on four years as an ensemble member of the Gelsenkirchen, Wuppertal and Bonn Operas as well as her victory in the prestigious Cardiff Singer of the World Competition. Sir Peter Jonas, one of the jury members in Cardiff, immediately invited her to sing Agathe (Der Freischütz) at the Bavarian State Opera. Since then Munich has been one of the places where she most enjoys working, enabling her at the same time to build up a close and long-standing relationship with the Munich Philharmonic as well. In 2007 she was named Bavarian Kammersängerin – to date the youngest singer to receive this accolade – and in 2018 she was awarded the Bavarian Order of Merit. She is also a recipient of the Meistersinger Medal.
International engagements have taken Anja Harteros all over the world, most notably to the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where she appeared as the Countess (Le nozze di Figaro) in 2003, followed by Violetta (La traviata) and Donna Anna (Don Giovanni) in a new production under James Levine; to the Paris Opéra for Eva (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg), Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte) and Leonora (La forza del destino); to London’s Royal Opera, Covent Garden, where her roles have included Desdemona (Otello); and to La Scala, Milan, where she has been heard as Handel’s Alcina, as Wagner’s Elsa and as Verdi’s Amelia (Simon Boccanegra) under Daniel Barenboim. She made her Vienna State Opera debut as Mimì (La Bohème) in 1999, returning most recently as a brilliant Maddalena in Andrea Chénier.

Her numerous recordings have been widely admired, especially Verdi’s Requiem, which she has recorded several times, notably with the Munich Philharmonic under Lorin Maazel, and Aida with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia under Antonio Pappano. Her DVD recordings include the title role in Tosca and Sieglinde in Die Walküre from the Salzburg Easter Festival, both of them under Christian Thielemann; Un ballo in maschera from the Bavarian State Opera under Zubin Mehta and Don Carlo under Pappano from the 2013 Salzburg Festival. Anja Harteros has already appeared in ten of Verdi’s leading soprano roles and is also a distinguished exponent of the music of Richard Strauss, whose Four Last Songs are a part of her repertoire as are the roles of the Marschallin (Der Rosenkavalier) and the title role in Arabella.