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The soprano Barbara Hannigan
is an artist who combines thrilling passion with exceptional
technique. Blessed with a voice at once pure and hot,
she has arrived, through challenging and diverse repertory
choices, at a point of complete control, intensity and
versatility. She also possesses a vital stage presence,
whether in opera or on the concert platform. Much sought
after in contemporary music - she has given over 75 world
premières - she is no less brilliant and devoted
a performer of Baroque and Classical music. Bringing freshness
to older music and authority to new, she is among the
very few singers whose every performance is an occasion.
Born and brought up in Canada, she received
her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the University
of Toronto, where she studied with Mary Morrison. As a
student she quickly developed a zest for new music, and
learned, she has said, from the composers with whom she
worked. She continued her studies at the Royal Conservatory
of The Hague with Meinard Kraak, and privately with Neil
Semer.
A frequent guest of the Berlin Philharmonic,
she most recently sang the title role in Stravinsky’s
opera Le Rossignol with the orchestra, conducted
by Pierre Boulez, and has performed other works of Stravinsky,
as well as pieces by Dutilleux, Webern and Ligeti, with
the orchestra under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle. She
has also performed with most of the other leading orchestras
and ensembles on both sides of the Atlantic, and with
conductors including Reinbert de Leeuw, Esa-Pekka Salonen,
Kurt Masur, Alan Gilbert, Jonathan Nott, Susanna Mälkki,
Jukka Pekka Saraste, Ingo Metzmacher, Pablo Heras-Casado,
Thomas Adès, Peter Oundjian, Oliver Knussen, John
Storgårds, Michael Gielen and Peter Eötvös.
For several years she was on tour with Maurizio Pollini’s
Progetto Pollini, singing works by Luigi Nono (most recently
at La Scala). She made her conducting debut at the Châtelet
in Paris, with Stravinsky's Renard.
As a performer of Ligeti’s music
she has received much acclaim, not least from the composer
himself. Mysteries of the Macabre, a tour de
force for soprano and orchestra, has become a signature
work, which she has sung - and sometimes also conducted
- at Lincoln Center, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Châtelet,
Salzburg, Disney Hall, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the
Konzerthaus in Vienna and elsewhere across three continents.
She has also appeared widely in Aventures and
Nouvelles Aventures, and in the Ligeti Requiem.
She made her debut at the Monnaie in 2009 as both Gepopo
and Venus in the Fura dels Baus production of Le Grand
Macabre, and sang Gepopo in the recent New York Philharmonic
staged production, directed by Dougas Fitch.
Dutilleux’s Correspondances is
another beloved piece, which she has sung over
25 times with orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic
(Rattle), the Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestra (de
Leeuw), the Oslo Phiharmonic (Saraste), the CBSO (Oramo)
at the 2005 BBC Proms, the Helsinki Philharmonic (Salonen),
the Orchestre National de France (Masur), the Toronto
Symphony (Oundjian) and at the Palais Garnier with the
Paris Opera Orchestra (Knussen).
Her operatic repertory includes roles
in Handel’s Rinaldo (Armida) and Ariodante
(Dalinda), Così fan tutte (Fiordiligi),
The Rape of Lucretia (Lucia), Dido and Aeneas
(Belinda), The Rake’s Progress (Anne
Truelove) and The Cunning Little Vixen (title
role). She has taken part in the world premières
of Pascal Dusapin’s Passion (Lei) at the
Aix Festival, Louis Andriessen’s Writing to
Vermeer (Saskia) for the Netherlands Opera, Jan van
de Putte’s Wet Snow (Liza) for the Nationale
Reisopera of the Netherlands, Michel van der Aa’s
solo opera One with film and electronics, Luca
Mosca’s Signor Goldoni (Despina) at La
Fenice and Gerald Barry’s The Bitter Tears of
Petra von Kant (Gabrielle) for English National Opera.
For her Barry also composed La Plus Forte, a
complete setting for soprano and orchestra of the Strindberg
play, which had its première in Paris in 2006,
and which she sang most recently with the London Symphony
Orchestra.
She began her 2010-11 season at the Théâtre
des Champs Elysées with Dusapin’s Passion,
in a new production by Sasha Waltz, and sang the title
role in Toshio Hosokawa's new opera Matsukaze
at the Monnaie, also in collaboration with Sasha Waltz.
Her appearances in these productions, requiring physical
as well as vocal agility and expressive potency, made
an extraordinary impression. Clips may be seen on YouTube.
It is her great privilege to have worked with
composers including not only those already mentioned
- Ligeti, Dutilleux, Andriessen, Barry, Hosokowa and others
- but also Luca Francesconi, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Peter
Eötvös and Oliver Knussen.
Upcoming engagements include performances
at Aix of Written on Skin, the new opera by George
Benjamin directed by Katie Mitchell, her debuts at Covent
Garden and the Teatro Liceu in Barcelona, a European tour
of Boulez's Pli selon pli with the Ensemble InterContemporain
conducted by the composer, and the world première
with the Berlin Philharmonic of let me tell you
for soprano and orchestra by Hans Abrahamsen with words
by Paul Griffiths. She will sing her first Lulu at the
Monnaie in 2012, in a new production by Krzysztof Warlikowski.
Biography written by
PAUL GRIFFITHS
June 2011. Not to be altered without permission. Please
destroy all previous biographical material
Barbara Hannigan is represented by HarrisonParrott.
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