Agneta oak wood

Agneta Eichenholz (born 1971 in Malmö ) is a Swedish opera singer specializing in coloratura soprano .

life and work

Agnete Eichenholz was more interested in pop music in her youth , but then she heard Barbara Bonney sing music by Mozart and began to memorize and sing without notes, text or music. She decided to study singing at the music academy in her hometown and the Operahögskolan i Stockholm . For a long time she sang primarily in Scandinavia , for example in Copenhagen , Stockholm and Uppsala , but now also at the Teatro Liceu in Barcelona , at the Komische Oper and the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, inDüsseldorf and Frankfurt am Main .

Eichenholz performed the title role of Lulu by Alban Berg at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London in 2009 under the musical direction of Antonio Pappano . It was staged by Christof Loy . This production was nominated for a Grammy and two years later it was shown at Madrid's Teatro Real . The singer's performance has often been described as a "sensational Covent Garden debut". She played and sang Lulu, meanwhile her star role, in two other productions: In May 2017 she created the role in the direction of William Kentridge and Luc de Wit at the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma , in December of the same year in an older production by Willy Decker at the Vienna State Opera . Alejo Pérez conducted in Rome and Ingo Metzmacher in Vienna . In Vienna, the work was given in the three-act version, created by Friedrich Cerha .

The two main focuses of the singer's broad repertoire are baroque and Mozart on the one hand, and 20th century and contemporary music on the other. In 2012 and 2017, she took on the soprano roles in two world premieres by the Basel composer Andrea Lorenzo Scartazzini in Basel and Berlin . In 2015 she made her debut at the Theater an der Wien in Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes , and in 2016 as Daphne at the Hamburg State Opera . Throughout her entire career, Mozart roles were the central axis of her subject, she sang Konstanze and Fiordiligi, Lucio Cinna and Elettra. In preparation are the Vitellia in La clemenza di Tito , which she will impersonate in May 2018 at the Vlaamse Opera in Ghent and Antwerp, and the Countess in Le nozze di Figaro .

Agneta Eichenholz can also be heard as a concert soloist. Her concert repertoire includes the Arthur Rimbaud scoring Les Illuminations by Benjamin Britten , Berg's Seven Early Songs and his Lulu Suite, Mahler's Fourth and Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs , as well as works by Joseph Canteloube , Francis Poulenc and Jean Sibelius . She was also heard in major choral orchestral works by Handel , Mozart , Fauré and Orff .

She has worked with conductors Ivor Bolton , Laurence Cummings , Peter Dijkstra , Peter Eötvös , Eliahu Inbal , Kristjan Järvi , Nicholas McGegan , Ingo Metzmacher , Günter Neuhold , Henrik Schaefer and Anu Tali , among others .

About the Lulu

“A lot of what Lulu does is what women have to do all the time: we have to try to get along with all the types of men who are using their power. In this sense, Lulu is a mirror of reality - maybe a distorting mirror, but still: Even if you are very angry, you usually don't kill the men right away. "

- Agneta Eichenholz : In an interview with Daniel Ender, Der Standard, December 1, 2017