Helga Meyer-Wagner

Helga Meyer-Wagner (born September 21, 1938 in Vienna ) is an Austrian opera singer ( soprano ) and singing teacher .

Career

Helga Wagner received piano lessons as a child and was a member of a church choir as a ten-year-old. She graduated from the teacher training college and then studied history at the University of Vienna and singing, song / oratorio and opera as well as music education at the Academy for Music and Performing Arts . During her studies she was a member of the Vienna Academy Chamber Choir, the additional choir of the Vienna Volksoper and the Vienna Madrigal Choir. But she also appeared as a soloist, among others under the direction of Leonard Bernstein .

From 1966 to 1969 Meyer-Wagner worked at the Volksoper Vienna , from 1969 to 1976 at the Landestheater Linz as a mezzo-soprano, since 1972 mainly and from 1976 onwards as a dramatic soprano. From 1979 to 1990 she sang mainly at the Stadttheater Würzburg . Guest performances have taken her to Switzerland, Holland, Italy and to the Vienna State and Volksoper, the Theater an der Wien , the Wiener Festwochen , the Salzburg and Bregenz Festival , but also to the Deutsche Oper Berlin , Amsterdam, Prague and Zurich and Geneva. She has sung around 100 different roles on stage.

As a concert and lied singer, her repertoire ranged from the Renaissance to the modern.

She has not performed since 1996, but began teaching as a vocal teacher at the Vienna Conservatory and the Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts in 1990 . She retired in 2007.

From 1962 until his death she was married to the conductor and choir director Franz Xaver Meyer and is the mother of three children, Christian , Angelika (1963–1988) and Roswitha Meyer .

Helga Meyer lives with her family in Scheiblingstein, Lower Austria .

Honors

• Professional title Professor (1999)
• Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art 2014 (Laudation: Franz Lukasovsky )

literature

• Alexander Rausch : Meyer, family, noble of. In: Oesterreichisches Musiklexikon . Online edition, Vienna 2002 ff., ISBN 3-7001-3077-5 ; Print edition: Volume 3, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-7001-3045-7 .