Karan Armstrong

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Karan Armstrong (born December 14, 1941 in Havre , Montana ) is an American opera singer (soprano).

Life

Initially trained as a pianist, Karan Armstrong graduated from Concordia College (Moorhead) in the USA in 1963 with a Bachelor of Music. She then studied with the legendary opera singer Lotte Lehmann , who, besides Armstrong, had only accepted one other master class student , Grace Bumbry .

She made her professional operatic debut in San Francisco in 1965 as Musetta in Puccini's La Bohème . After Armstrong won a Metropolitan Opera singing competition , she made her debut in a supporting role in Strauss' Wife Without a Shadow at the New York House in 1967 . In addition to other roles at the “Met” , she was frequently engaged at the New York City Opera from 1969 to 1977 (including as Violetta in Verdi's La traviata ), which is why she also took up residence in New York City during this time .

In Europe, Armstrong made his debut in 1974 as Micaëla in Bizet's Carmen at the Opéra du Rhin in Strasbourg. The following year she drew attention across Europe with her first Salome von Strauss at the same house. This success was immediately followed by numerous engagements across Europe, such as Tosca in Venice , and a resoundingly successful Elsa ( Lohengrin / Wagner ) at the Bayreuth Festival in 1979, directed by her future husband Götz Friedrich . This Bayreuth production was later both recorded and filmed.

From 1981 to 2000 she sang very often in Berlin at the Deutsche Oper Berlin , where her husband was general manager, and at the Komische Oper . In addition, she also appeared at the Vienna State Opera , the Paris Opera , the Royal Opera House , where her Lulu von (Berg) was particularly successful, then in Los Angeles and at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow .

In the later years of her stage career, Armstrong was sometimes dubbed the "prima donna of modernity" because she has co-designed numerous opera premieres. So she brought out Gottfried von Einems Jesu Hochzeit (as a dead woman), Giuseppe Sinopolis Lou Salomé , Luciano Berios Un re in ascolto , York Höllers Maître et Marguerite and Siegfried Matthus ' Desdemona and her sisters .

Armstrong's focus was on creating roles in the works of Fidelio , Tannhäuser (as Venus), Lohengrin , Die Walküre (as Sieglinde), Parsifal , Les contes d'Hoffmann (as Giulietta), Pelléas et Mélisande , Katja Kabanova , The Makropulos Case , Salome , Der Rosenkavalier , Expectation , Lulu , Wozzeck , Die tote Stadt , La voix humaine , Mathis the painter (as Ursula), Susannah , and Dialogues des Carmélites (as mother Marie of the incarnation).

In 1985 Karan Armstrong was named Baden-Württemberg Chamber Singer in Stuttgart, and in 1994 she was appointed Chamber Singer of the State of Berlin. After her first marriage to George D Tefkin, she was married to Götz Friedrich from 1979 until his death . The marriage produced a son.

At the Ruhrtriennale 2014 she played in the production singer without shadow .

In 2015, the Karan Armstrong Prize named after her was awarded for the first time .

Discography

Videos

literature

  • Robert Craft: An Improbable Life , Vanderbilt University Press, 2002, ISBN 0826513816
  • David Hamilton, Simon and Schuster (Ed.): The Metropolitan Opera Encyclopedia , 1987. ISBN 0-671-61732-X
  • Ruth Renée Reif: Karan Armstrong: The girl from the golden west , Langen Müller, 1996. ISBN 3-7844-2563-1
  • Marianne Reissinger: Götz Friedrich. Artist against his will . Quadriga Verlag, Munich, 2000

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Index in Piper's Encyclopedia of Music Theater .
  2. ↑ Ruhrtriennale: Scenic essay about appearance and being, Boris Nikitin's "Singer Without Shadow" , review by Ulrike Gondorf in Deutschlandradio Kultur on August 22, 2014, accessed on August 23, 2014
  3. ↑ Singer without a shadow - Boris Nikitin traces the power of the human voice with his project for the Ruhrtriennale , Nachtkritik.de, August 22, 2014, accessed August 23, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Armstrong, Karan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American opera singer (soprano)
DATE OF BIRTH December 14, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Havre , Montana