Gundula Janowitz
Gundula Janowitz ( born August 2, 1937 in Berlin) is an Austrian opera, oratorio and concert singer ( lyric soprano ).
Career
Gundula Janowitz studied in Graz and started at the end of the 1950s to sing in prestigious ensembles (such as the creation of Herbert von Karajan, 1960). 1959 Karajan engaged her as Barbarina in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro at the Vienna State Opera, of which she was a permanent member in 1962. In the 1960s and 1970s, she was one of the most internationally sought after singers in her field and developed a comprehensive and widely acclaimed discography of Johann Sebastian Bach to Richard Strauss in collaboration with the most important conductors (her temporary mentor Herbert von Karajan, Otto Klemperer, Karl Böhm, Eugen Jochum, Leonard Bernstein, Rafael Kubelik Georg Solti, Carlos Kleiber ).
One of the focal points of Janowitz was the design of recitals, so many times at the Salzburg Festival. Your vocal career was followed by a job as a singing teacher. In 1990 she took over temporarily the position of Opera Director in Graz.
Gundula Janowitz appeared on many great stages of the world, regularly, for example, at the Salzburg Easter Festival. At the Paris Opera in 1973 she sang the Countess in a legendary new production of Le nozze di Figaro (conductor Georg Solti, directed by Giorgio Strehler, stage Ezio Frigerio ).
Your farewell premiere was in November 1987 at the Vienna State Opera, the Clytemnestra in Christoph Willibald Gluck's Iphigénie en Aulis (Conductor Charles Mackerras, directed by Claus Helmut Drese, stage Hans Schavernoch ). Your official stage Gundula Janowitz took leave in 1990.
Gundula Janowitz is married to the Berlin opera director Nicholas Sulzberger and lives in the vicinity of St. Pölten, Lower Austria.
Voice and repertoire
Gundula Janowitz 's voice was characterized by a very bright, pure, tremolo -free sound with little vibrato and even breathing technique and retained her youthful tone and freshness to the more mature age. Like their similar timbre of her predecessors, Elisabeth Grummer and Maria Stader and their age -mate Elizabeth Harwood dominated them, above all, the high and middle register and lyrical- pathetic expression. So she tried occasionally in dramatic ( Sieglinde, Leonore ) or comic roles ( Marcellina, Rosalinde ), but it was valued above all things as the Countess Almaviva, Pamina, Agathe, Eva, Gutrune, Arabella, Ariadne and as the Countess in Capriccio. With few exceptions, she avoided foreign-language roles, and generally the modern repertoire, except for the Bavarian composer Richard Strauss and Carl Orff.
Awards
Discography (selection)
- With Otto Klemperer: The Magic Flute
- With Herbert von Karajan: The Creation, The Seasons, Die Walküre, Götterdämmerung, St Matthew Passion, B Minor Mass, Fidelio (as Marcellina ), 9th Symphony, Missa Solemnis, A German Requiem, Four Last Songs
- With Leonard Bernstein: Fidelio ( as Leonore )
- With Eugen Jochum: Carmina Burana
- With Carlos Kleiber: Der Freischütz
- With Karl Böhm: Così fan tutte, Le Nozze di Figaro, Die Fledermaus, The Seasons, Capriccio
- With Rafael Kubelik: The Mastersingers of Nuremberg, Lohengrin
- With Rudolf Kempe: Ariadne auf Naxos
- With Karl Richter: Christmas Oratorio, B Minor Mass, Messiah
- With Hans Knappertsbusch: Parsifal (1962 - as a flower girl )
- With Irwin Gage: 52 Schubert songs, German Grammophon