Laura Aikin

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Laura Aikin as Marie in the Alvis Hermanis production of the soldiers , Salzburg Festival 2012

Laura Aikin (born 1964 in Buffalo ) is an American opera singer ( soprano ). She is considered "the ideal Lulu of our day" and is recognized both in Mozart and Richard Strauss roles and as an interpreter of contemporary music .

Life

Aikin grew up as the daughter of a metalworker and a housewife - together with four sisters - in modest circumstances. When she was 15 she saw an opera on stage for the first time. After finishing school, she studied art at the State University of New York in Buffalo and music at Indiana University , as well as under a DAAD scholarship with Kammersängerin Reri Grist at the University of Music in Munich.

In 1991 Aikin made her debut at an opera gala in Berlin, and from 1992 to 1998 she was a member of the ensemble of the Deutsche Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin. There the singer appeared more than 300 times, was able to build up a broad repertoire and was also entrusted with leading roles such as the Queen of the Night ( Die Zauberflöte ), Zerbinetta ( Ariadne auf Naxos ) and the title role in Lulu .

In 1995 she made her debut at the Vienna State Opera (as Olympia in Hoffmann's Stories ) and at the Salzburg Festival (in a choir concert in the Mozarteum ). Aikin has worked at the most important opera houses in the world since 1998, and in Salzburg since 1999 Aikin has also appeared regularly in major stage roles. She guested u. a. in Amsterdam ( De Nederlandse Opera ), Brussels ( La Monnaie ), Paris ( Opéra Bastille ), Lyon ( Opéra ), Montpellier, Dresden ( Semperoper ), Frankfurt / Main ( Opera ), Munich ( Bavarian State Opera ), Zurich ( Opera House ), at the Maggio Musicale and at the Scala , at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples and at the Teatro Liceu in Barcelona. In the United States , she has been hired in Chicago , the Met , San Francisco and Santa Fe so far .

Laura Aikin is valued for her vocal range of three octaves , as well as for her acting talent and stage presence . She lives in Berlin with her two children .

repertoire

Aikin's star role is the title role in Lulu by Alban Berg . She embodied this role first in Berlin, from 2002 in Amsterdam and Zurich, from 2003 to 2011 in a Willy Decker production in Paris, and finally from 2009 in a Peter Stein production in Lyon, Milan and at the Wiener Festwochen.

Her appearances in the classic coloratura roles of Mozart , Jacques Offenbach and Richard Strauss were also successful : she sang The Queen of the Night ( Die Zauberflöte ) in Berlin and Vienna, in 1998 at the Met and in 1999 in the Achim Freyer production at the Salzburg Festival . As Konstanze ( The Abduction from the Seraglio ) she appeared in Frankfurt, Munich, Amsterdam, Brussels, as well as in 2003 and 2006 at the Salzburg Festival. She embodied Olympia ( Hoffmann's stories ) in Berlin, Vienna and Paris, Zerbinetta ( Ariadne auf Naxos ) in Berlin, Vienna and Paris, as well as in Munich, Milan, Florence, Lyon and Chicago, Fiakermilli ( Arabella ) only in New York.

However, the singer has a broad repertoire that extends from the baroque to the present day . Her Mozart roles range from early works - such as the title role in Zaide (in Berlin), Aspasia in Mitridate (Santa Fe), Guinia in Lucio Silla (Barcelona) - to the Blondchen ( Die Entführung aus dem Serail , Salzburg Festival 2004) to Donna Anna ( Don Giovanni , 2010 in Budapest and 2011 in New York). In Richard Strauss' works she also embodied the Aminta in the Schweigsamen Frau , the Aithra in the Egyptian Helena and several times Sophie in the Rosenkavalier . Aikin also sang classical repertoire - Gilda ( Rigoletto ) in Berlin, Marcelline ( Fidelio ) in Milan and Adele ( Die Fledermaus ) in Berlin and Vienna.

From the baroque repertoire, the Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare (in Dresden) and the title role in Alcina (at the Festival in Beaune ) should be mentioned. Aikin also appeared in roles like Amenaìde in Tancredi (in Berlin and Zurich), and Diana in Vicente Martín y Soler's L'arbore di Diana (in Barcelona),

The artist's commitment to works by contemporary composers is remarkable. She took part in the following world premieres and important revivals:

The singer was also active in the field of classical modernism, as Soeur Constance in the Dialogues des Carmélites at Scala, as Anne Truelove in The Rake's Progress and as Angel in Olivier Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise , both in San Francisco, as well as Cundegonde in Candide in Naples. Since the end of the 2000s, the singer has been trying to gain a foothold in the bel canto subject - as Minna in the French "Holländer" (Le vaisseau fantôme) by Pierre-Louis Dietsch in Berlin, in the title role of Lucia di Lammermoor in Montpellier and as Marguerite de Valois in Les Huguenots in Strasbourg .

Discography (selection)

On DVD

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kutsch / Riemens: Großes Sängerlexikon , 4th edition, vol. 1, p. 30
  2. ↑ Laura Aikin in the Bavarian Musicians' Lexicon Online (BMLO)
personal data
SURNAME Aikin, Laura
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American opera singer (soprano)
DATE OF BIRTH 1964
PLACE OF BIRTH Buffalo