Gwyneth Jones (soprano)
Dame Gwyneth Jones DBE ( born November 7, 1936 in Pontnewynydd, Wales ) is a British opera singer ( dramatic soprano ).
Biography
Studies and early years
Gwyneth Jones was born in the Welsh county of Monmouthshire. She studied for four years of singing at the Royal College of Music in London with Arnold Smith and Ruth Packer. He continued his studies at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, at the International Opera Studio in Zurich and Geneva with Maria Carpi.
Her first engagement was Jones at the Stadttheater Zurich. She made her debut there in the season 1962/1963 as a gypsy Czipra in the operetta The Gypsy Baron. Jones initially sang in the vocal category mezzo- soprano. Her first roles were in Zurich Magdalene in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1962), Annina in Der Rosenkavalier (1962), the male title role in Orfeo ed Euridice (1962 ) and the title role in Carmen (1963). Jones completed the change to soprano compartment, where they first sang soprano roles of the young dramatic tray. Your first soprano role she sang in April 1963 in Zurich; it was the Amelia in Verdi's opera A Masked Ball. The mid / late 1960s, she sang roles such as the title role in Aida ( debut: January, 1968 in London), Leonora in Il Trovatore ( debut: November 1964 in London) and Lady Macbeth in Macbeth ( in 1963 with a guest appearance of the Covent Garden Opera at the Welsh Opera in Cardiff ) - a role with which she was not until the late 1990s, on the stage. In 1964, she debuted at the headquarters of the Royal Covent Garden Opera in London as Leonore in Fidelio. She sang there in the course of her career, among other things: Leonora in Il Trovatore ( Season 1964/1965 ), Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana ( Debut: March 1965 ), Sieglinde in Die Walküre ( Season 1965/1966 ), Desdemona in Otello ( debut May 1966), Elizabeth of Valois in Don Carlos ( debut: June 1966 ), Donna Anna in Don Giovanni ( debut: July 1967), as well as the title roles in Tosca and Salome. Jones stepped up in the 1990s and over again at the Covent Garden Opera, so as Salome (1986) Brünnhilde ( last time in 1991 in a complete Ring cycle ) and as Ortrud in Lohengrin (1997).
International career since the 1960s
Since the mid 1960s, Jones was an internationally emerging singer. The development of the dramatic soprano was carried out relatively quickly. In 1966 she appeared as soprano soloist in Verdi's Requiem in Rome; at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, she debuted in the same year as Desdemona. In February 1966, she was with the Fidelio - Leonore her debut at the Vienna State Opera; there she was until 1995 a permanent member. In 1989 she was appointed there as an honorary member. Jones then has also appeared at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. In 1966 she made her U.S. debut at the Opera House of Dallas with the role of Lady Macbeth. In the season 1966/1967 she sang Fidelio Leonore at her debut at La Scala. In 1970 she made her debut as Salome at the Hamburg State Opera. Since 1972 she was a member of the Metropolitan Opera. There, Jones sang, among others, in the course of their careers: Fidelio Leonore, Isolde in Tristan and Isolde, the title role in Salome, the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier.
Jones guested further at the Grand Opéra Paris ( 1977 as Poppea in L' incoronazione di Poppea ) at the Salzburg Festival (1979 as the Marschallin ), at the Cologne Opera ( 1979 as Elizabeth of Valois; 1984/1985 Elektra ), at the Opera House Nuremberg (1982 as Tosca ) and at the Savonlinna Opera Festival ( 1992 Fidelio Leonore ).
Later in her career, she took over especially the highly dramatic title role in Elektra (including 1998 again at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the 1989 festival in orange) and Turandot (including 1984 with a guest appearance of the Covent Garden Opera in Los Angeles, in 1985 at the Opera Festival in the Baths of Caracalla, in 1987 at the opening night of the new opera house in Pittsburgh, in 1990 at the Covent Garden Opera ), the dyer's Wife in Die Frau ohne Schatten and Isolde. In a performance of Strauss 's opera Die Frau ohne Schatten at the Zurich Opera in 1985 Gwyneth Jones was cast in the title role of John Dyer woman. As the day of the performance, the singer canceled the second main section of the Empress, Jones took over in the same performance even this second batch.
Participation at the Bayreuth Festival
From 1966 to 1980 Jones appeared regularly at the Bayreuth Festival. In Bayreuth Jones first sang the Wagnerian roles in teen - dramatic roles; However, it took over later the highly dramatic Wagner heroines. She sang in Bayreuth in detail the following roles: Sieglinde in Die Walküre (1966, 1970-1973 ), Eva in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1968, 1969), Kundry in Parsifal (1969, 1970) and Senta in The Flying Dutchman ( 1969 - 1971). In Götz Friedrich's a Stage scandal triggering Tannhäuser staging (premiere: 1972 ) Jones sang the roles Elisabeth and Venus in the same performance; these two roles she repeated in Bayreuth in the years 1973, 1974 and 1977.
The Brünnhilde sang Jones in Bayreuth in 1974 initially only in Twilight of the Gods, 1975, in the complete tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen. When so-called Bayreuth " century - ring " with conductor Pierre Boulez and director Patrice Chéreau she sang from 1976 to 1980 again Brünnhilde in Der Ring des Nibelungen. 1982 jumped Jones again in the short term as a substitute for the heavily pregnant Lisbeth Balslev as Senta in the Dutchman 's production of Harry Kupfer and sang all performances in the festival summer 1982. Besides Isolde and Ortrud she thus sang at the Bayreuth Festival, all the great Wagnerian roles their field.
When Wagner interpreter was Jones as the founder of a new type of performer, as singing actress with fervor and emotion. They "liberated the Wagner roles of each heroines patina ". Gwyneth Jones worked in the presentation of Wagner's heroines, " stressed female". Jones was a " stage effect " [e ] Actress; their " strong personality " helped her in the Wagner roles to the strongest effect.
Late years of career
In the late years of her career (from about 1995) Jones sang many very different games, from Bel Canto ( 1996, title role in Norma in Solothurn ) to character roles. Belonged to their roles: Küsterin in Leoš Janáček's Jenufa (1996, Staatsoper Dresden) and Kabanicha in Katja Kabanowa, the woman in Arnold Schoenberg's monodrama Erwartung ( Saarland State Theatre), the (1997 in Paris at the Théâtre du Châtelet), Gertrude in Hansel and Gretel the Begbick widow in the Rise and fall of the City of Mahagonny ( Salzburg Festival, 1998), Ruth in the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta the Pirates of Penzance ( Vienna Volksoper, 2002) and Herodias in Salome (including in Pittsburgh, Baltimore and 2008 in Malmö).
Even in recent times, it is artistically still active, are individual concerts and debuted in 2005 as Clytemnestra in Elektra in Hong Kong. This makes it one the three major female roles in her repertoire of this opera, which only reached Leonie Rysanek before her. In addition, she has been heard as a woman in Poulenc's La Voix Humaine. In 2007 she sang at the opening of the Munich Opera Festival in the world premiere of Alice in Wonderland by Chin Unsuk the Queen of Hearts. In May 2012 she sang again at three performances the role of Herodias in Salome at the Vienna State Opera. Likewise, in 2012 she worked on the film with quartet, in which she plays an aging diva.
Today, Jones has lived in Switzerland. She is an honorary member of the Richard Wagner Association of Saarland.
Their daughter, Susannah rhyme or opera singer, is also (mezzo- soprano).
Discography (selection)
- Leonard Bernstein: Der Rosenkavalier ( Octavian )
- With Karl Böhm: Fidelio, Salome (both the title role), The Flying Dutchman ( Senta )
- With Pierre Boulez: The Ring of the Nibelung ( Brünnhilde ), Parsifal ( Kundry )
- With Rafael Kubelik: Lohengrin ( Ortrud )
- With Colin Davis: Tannhäuser (Elisabeth and Venus in a recording)
- With Georg Solti: Götterdämmerung ( Wellgunde )
- John Barbirolli: Otello ( Desdemona )
- With Olivero de Fabritiis: Don Carlos ( Elisabetta )
- With Gustav Kuhn: Macbeth (Lady Macbeth)
- With Carlos Kleiber: Elektra ( CHRYSOTHEMIS ), Der Rosenkavalier ( Marschallin )
- Antal Dorati with: The Egyptian Helen (title role )
- With Marcello Viotti: La Fanciulla del West ( Minnie )
- Roberto Paternostro: Four Last Songs ( Orchestral Songs, soloist ) - live, Suntory Hall in Tokyo