Anna Tomowa-Sintow
Encyclopedia
Anna Tomowa-Sintow is a Bulgarian soprano
who has sung to great acclaim in all the major opera houses around the world in a repertoire that includes Mozart
, Rossini
, Verdi
, Puccini
, Wagner
, and Strauss
. She enjoyed a particularly close professional relationship with conductor
Herbert von Karajan
from 1973 until the conductor's death in 1989.
Tomowa-Sintow began studying piano at age six. At sixteen she won a national singing competition. She later attended the National Conservatory of Sofia, where she studied voice with Professor Georgi Zlatev-Tcherkin and soprano Katia Spiridonowa and graduated with diplomas in voice and piano, making her stage debut, for her master class finals, as Tatiana in Tchaikovsky's
Eugene Onegin
. Upon graduation, she joined the Opera Studio of the Leipzig Opera
, where, in 1967, she made her professional debut as Abigaille in Verdi's Nabucco
. While with this company she built up her repertoire with the leading roles in Puccini's Madama Butterfly
and Manon Lescaut
; Verdi's La traviata
, Il trovatore
, and Otello
; Mozart's Don Giovanni
; Strauss's Arabella
; and Werner Egk
's Die Zaubergeige. For many of these roles she studied with the company's music director, Professor Peter Schmitz, who had studied with Richard Strauss.
In 1972, she was invited to join the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin
, where she was named Kammersängerin during her very first year. In Berlin she continued to expand her repertoire with leading roles in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro
and Così fan tutte
, Verdi's Aida
, Puccini's Tosca
, Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin
, Wagner's Tannhäuser
and Lohengrin
, and Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos
and Der Rosenkavalier
.
She is also a Kammersängerin of the Vienna Staatsoper
.
In 1973, Tomowa-Sintow auditioned for conductor Herbert von Karajan for the upcoming world premiere of Carl Orff
's De temporum fine comœdia at the Salzburg Festival
. He hired her immediately, and for the next seventeen years (until Karajan's death) the two worked frequently together in opera houses, concert halls, and recording studios around the world. Karajan called Tomowa-Sintow "the greatest talent I have encountered over the past years." From 1973 through 1991, Tomowa-Sintow was a permanent guest of the Salzburg Festival. With that maestro, she recorded Le nozze di Figaro (1978), Lohengrin (opposite René Kollo
and Dunja Vejzovic
, 1976-81) and Der Rosenkavalier (with Agnes Baltsa
and Janet Perry
, 1982).
Tomowa-Sintow made her San Francisco Opera
debut in 1974, as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni; her Covent Garden
debut in 1975, as Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte; her Metropolitan Opera
debut in 1976 and her Lyric Opera of Chicago
debut in 1980, both as Donna Anna; and her La Scala
debut in 1982, as Elsa in Lohengrin.
Her recording of Ariadne auf Naxos with James Levine
and the Vienna Philharmonic
won the 1988 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording
.
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
who has sung to great acclaim in all the major opera houses around the world in a repertoire that includes Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
, Rossini
Gioacchino Rossini
Gioachino Antonio Rossini was an Italian composer who wrote 39 operas as well as sacred music, chamber music, songs, and some instrumental and piano pieces...
, Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
, Puccini
Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...
, Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
, and Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
. She enjoyed a particularly close professional relationship with conductor
Conducting
Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...
Herbert von Karajan
Herbert von Karajan
Herbert von Karajan was an Austrian orchestra and opera conductor. To the wider world he was perhaps most famously associated with the Berlin Philharmonic, of which he was principal conductor for 35 years...
from 1973 until the conductor's death in 1989.
Tomowa-Sintow began studying piano at age six. At sixteen she won a national singing competition. She later attended the National Conservatory of Sofia, where she studied voice with Professor Georgi Zlatev-Tcherkin and soprano Katia Spiridonowa and graduated with diplomas in voice and piano, making her stage debut, for her master class finals, as Tatiana in Tchaikovsky's
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
Eugene Onegin
Eugene Onegin (opera)
Eugene Onegin, Op. 24, is an opera in 3 acts , by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto was written by Konstantin Shilovsky and the composer and his brother Modest, and is based on the novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin....
. Upon graduation, she joined the Opera Studio of the Leipzig Opera
Oper Leipzig
Oper Leipzig is an opera house and opera company in Leipzig, Germany.The Leipzig Opera traces its establishment to the year 1693, making it the third oldest opera venue in Europe after La Fenice and the Hamburg State Opera...
, where, in 1967, she made her professional debut as Abigaille in Verdi's Nabucco
Nabucco
Nabucco is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Temistocle Solera, based on the Biblical story and the 1836 play by Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois and Francis Cornue...
. While with this company she built up her repertoire with the leading roles in Puccini's Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Puccini based his opera in part on the short story "Madame Butterfly" by John Luther Long, which was dramatized by David Belasco...
and Manon Lescaut
Manon Lescaut (Puccini)
Manon Lescaut is an opera in four acts by Giacomo Puccini. The story is based on the 1731 novel L’histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut by the Abbé Prévost....
; Verdi's La traviata
La traviata
La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...
, Il trovatore
Il trovatore
Il trovatore is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Salvadore Cammarano, based on the play El Trovador by Antonio García Gutiérrez. Cammarano died in mid-1852 before completing the libretto...
, and Otello
Otello
Otello is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on Shakespeare's play Othello. It was Verdi's penultimate opera, and was first performed at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, on February 5, 1887....
; Mozart's Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
; Strauss's Arabella
Arabella
Arabella is a lyric comedy or opera in 3 acts by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, their sixth and last operatic collaboration. It was first performed on 1 July 1933, at the Dresden Sächsisches Staatstheater....
; and Werner Egk
Werner Egk
Werner Egk , born Werner Joseph Mayer, was a German composer.-Early career:He was born in the Swabian town of Auchsesheim, today part of Donauwörth, Germany. His family, of Catholic peasant stock, moved to Augsburg when Egk was six. He studied at a Benedictine Gymnasium and entered the municipal...
's Die Zaubergeige. For many of these roles she studied with the company's music director, Professor Peter Schmitz, who had studied with Richard Strauss.
In 1972, she was invited to join the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin
Deutsche Oper Berlin
The Deutsche Oper Berlin is an opera company located in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin, Germany. The resident building is also home to the Berlin State Ballet.-History:...
, where she was named Kammersängerin during her very first year. In Berlin she continued to expand her repertoire with leading roles in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro
The Marriage of Figaro
Le nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata , K. 492, is an opera buffa composed in 1786 in four acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, based on a stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro .Although the play by...
and Così fan tutte
Così fan tutte
Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti K. 588, is an opera buffa by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart first performed in 1790. The libretto was written by Lorenzo Da Ponte....
, Verdi's Aida
Aida
Aida sometimes spelled Aïda, is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, based on a scenario written by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette...
, Puccini's Tosca
Tosca
Tosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900...
, Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin
Eugene Onegin (opera)
Eugene Onegin, Op. 24, is an opera in 3 acts , by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto was written by Konstantin Shilovsky and the composer and his brother Modest, and is based on the novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin....
, Wagner's Tannhäuser
Tannhäuser (opera)
Tannhäuser is an opera in three acts, music and text by Richard Wagner, based on the two German legends of Tannhäuser and the song contest at Wartburg...
and Lohengrin
Lohengrin (opera)
Lohengrin is a romantic opera in three acts composed and written by Richard Wagner, first performed in 1850. The story of the eponymous character is taken from medieval German romance, notably the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach and its sequel, Lohengrin, written by a different author, itself...
, and Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos
Ariadne auf Naxos
Ariadne auf Naxos is an opera by Richard Strauss with a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Bringing together slapstick comedy and consuming beautiful music, the opera's theme is the competition between high and low art for the public's attention.- First version :The opera was originally...
and Der Rosenkavalier
Der Rosenkavalier
Der Rosenkavalier is a comic opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to an original German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It is loosely adapted from the novel Les amours du chevalier de Faublas by Louvet de Couvrai and Molière’s comedy Monsieur de Pourceaugnac...
.
She is also a Kammersängerin of the Vienna Staatsoper
Vienna State Opera
The Vienna State Opera is an opera house – and opera company – with a history dating back to the mid-19th century. It is located in the centre of Vienna, Austria. It was originally called the Vienna Court Opera . In 1920, with the replacement of the Habsburg Monarchy by the First Austrian...
.
In 1973, Tomowa-Sintow auditioned for conductor Herbert von Karajan for the upcoming world premiere of Carl Orff
Carl Orff
Carl Orff was a 20th-century German composer, best known for his cantata Carmina Burana . In addition to his career as a composer, Orff developed an influential method of music education for children.-Early life:...
's De temporum fine comœdia at the Salzburg Festival
Salzburg Festival
The Salzburg Festival is a prominent festival of music and drama established in 1920. It is held each summer within the Austrian town of Salzburg, the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart...
. He hired her immediately, and for the next seventeen years (until Karajan's death) the two worked frequently together in opera houses, concert halls, and recording studios around the world. Karajan called Tomowa-Sintow "the greatest talent I have encountered over the past years." From 1973 through 1991, Tomowa-Sintow was a permanent guest of the Salzburg Festival. With that maestro, she recorded Le nozze di Figaro (1978), Lohengrin (opposite René Kollo
René Kollo
René Kollo is a German tenor.-Biography:He was born René Kollodzieyski in Berlin and grew up in Wyk auf Föhr. He attended a photography school in Hamburg, although he had always been interested in music, particularly conducting. He did not begin to perform until the mid-50s...
and Dunja Vejzovic
Dunja Vejzovic
Dunja Vejzovic , née Crnković, in Zagreb, Croatia, on October 20, 1943, is an acclaimed operatic soprano who began her career with the Zagreb National Theatre, where she made her "real" debut in 1970, as Ariel in Stjepan Šulek's Oluja...
, 1976-81) and Der Rosenkavalier (with Agnes Baltsa
Agnes Baltsa
Agnes Baltsa is a leading Greek mezzo-soprano.Baltsa was born in Lefkada. She began playing piano at the age of six, before moving to Athens in 1958 to concentrate on singing...
and Janet Perry
Janet Perry
Janet Perry is a celebrated operatic soprano. As a child of eleven, she was seen in a stage-version of The Wizard of Oz, at the St Paul Civic Opera...
, 1982).
Tomowa-Sintow made her San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera is an American opera company, based in San Francisco, California.It was founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola and is the second largest opera company in North America...
debut in 1974, as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni; her Covent Garden
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
debut in 1975, as Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte; her Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
debut in 1976 and her Lyric Opera of Chicago
Lyric Opera of Chicago
Lyric Opera of Chicago is one of the leading opera companies in the United States. It was founded in Chicago in 1952, under the name 'Lyric Theatre of Chicago' by Carol Fox, Nicolà Rescigno and Lawrence Kelly, with a season that included Maria Callas's American debut in Norma...
debut in 1980, both as Donna Anna; and her La Scala
La Scala
La Scala , is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal-Ducal Theatre at La Scala...
debut in 1982, as Elsa in Lohengrin.
Her recording of Ariadne auf Naxos with James Levine
James Levine
James Lawrence Levine is an American conductor and pianist. He is currently the music director of the Metropolitan Opera and former music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Levine's first performance conducting the Metropolitan Opera was on June 5, 1971, and as of May 2011 he has...
and the Vienna Philharmonic
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
The Vienna Philharmonic is an orchestra in Austria, regularly considered one of the finest in the world....
won the 1988 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording
Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording
The Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording has been awarded since 1961. The award was originally titled Best Classical Opera Production. The current title has been used since 1962....
.
External links
- Anna Tomowa-Sintow: Primadonna with Heart
- Her page on the Stars of Bulgarian Opera site with 4 mp3 audio clips of selected arias
Interviews
- Anna Tomowa-Sintow interview by Bruce Duffie