Hannelore Bode

Hannelore Bode (born 2 August 1941) is a German operatic soprano. She performed at the Bayreuth Festival from 1968 to 1978, including Elsa in Lohengrin and Eva in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and several parts in the 1976 Jahrhundertring, including Sieglinde in Die Walküre.

Career

Bode was born in Berlin. She studied there for two years with Ria Schmitz-Gohr in Berlin, then at the Salzburg Mozarteum and with Fred Husler. She was first engaged at the Theater Bonn in 1964. In the 1967/68 season, she sang with the Theater Basel, the following season with the Deutsche Oper am Rhein.

Bode performed at the Bayreuth Festival from 1968 to 1978, including Elsa in Lohengrin (from 1971) and Eva in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (from 1973). She performed several parts in the Jahrhundertring, the 1976 centenary performance of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, staged by Patrice Chéreau, Sieglinde in Die Walküre, and Gutrune and the third Norn in Götterdämmerung.

She appeared internationally, in 1977 at Covent Garden as Agathe in Weber's Der Freischütz, as Eva both at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires in 1980 and at the San Francisco Opera in 1981, and in Washington in 1975 as Elsa in a production of the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

In 1996, she sang in the contemporary opera Amandas Traum by Harold Weiss.

Recordings

Bode recorded Eva in Meistersinger in 1967, conducted by Georg Solti, with Norman Bayley as Sachs and René Kollo as Stolzing. She appears in the part again in a 1974 live recording from Bayreuth, conducted by Silvio Varviso, in a cast with Karl Ridderbusch as Sachs, Jean Cox as Stolzing and Anna Reynolds as Magdalene. A review noted:

Hannelore Bode as Eva has a somewhat light voice but for once spares us the maternal flavor that seems to affect many an Eva.

External links

• Literature by and about Hannelore Bode in the German National Library catalogue
• Hannelore Bode wagneropera.net