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During the Munich Opera Festival of 2010, I had the opportunity of interviewing one of the most exciting and important lyric sopranos of today: Anja Harteros. She had performed the role of Donna Anna in "Don Giovanni", Elsa in "Lohengrin" and a beautiful Liederabend with songs by Schubert, Wolf, Brahms and Strauss during this famous and important festival's 2010 edition.
Born in Bergneustadt on July 23rd, 1972, Anja Harteros has quickly become one of the most important sopranos of her generation. After winning the 1999 Cardiff Singer of the World competition,  she has appeared in such important theaters as the Bayerische Staatsoper, the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, La Scala de Milan, the Wiener Staatsoper, Royal Opera House in London, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Semper Oper in Dresden, and opera houses in Hamburg, Lyon, Geneve, Amsterdam, Florence plus the Salzburg Festival.
Listening to Harteros for the first time is a magical experience; her voice is big, with a warm colour, ringing high notes and a rich, full center. She has a commanding stage presence, with a natural magnetism that captures your attention every time she is on stage. She has the power to make all the roles she sings her own: her Violetta is one of the best this critic has heard in years, her Elsa is mesmerizing and her Donna Anna is just pure perfection. Her Contessa in "Le Nozze di Figaro" has been praised as one of the best in the opera world today. She is equally wonderful in Mozart, Verdi, Strauss, Wagner and even in Händel (which she has sung in Munich, La Scala and Vienna, singing the title role of ALCINA).
We met at the Bayerische Staatsoper for our interview. She had just sang the first of two performances of "Lohengrin" in a production by Richard Jones which she had already performed last year to great success and which is now available on DVD. She is a charming woman, tall, with beautiful, tender eyes and a dazzling personality. We started our talk sitting down in front of the big mirror of the dressing room where our interview took place and she talked to us about her beginnings, her roles and her views on the music and characters she performs.

Ms. Harteros, when was your first encounter with opera?
My first experiences with opera was when I was in school and we made a trip with my classmates to Cologne to see "Die Zauberflöte" for children. It was a very exciting experience and afterwards we went to see "Hänsel und Gretel", then "Idomeneo", "La Bohéme" and mostly operas that were performed in Cologne.

What was your first impression of it? Did you think it was something you wanted to do or you just find it nice?
I thought it was something very beautiful and that it must be very exciting to be standing on stage but I didn't decide to become a singer then.

Did you play any instruments?
I played the blockflöte and then when I grew up I played the violin, I was in the school's orchestra and choir and when I was 15 years old, I decided to take singing lessons. It was so wonderful for me to sing so I decided to do the test to go to the high school of music in Cologne and for that I needed to play the piano so I took piano lessons too.

When did you sing your first opera?
My first opera role in a concert version in the Gymnasium was as Zerlina in "Don Giovanni". It was not professional, I was 13 years old but that was just for fun and before I had singing lessons. In a professional theater I made my debut in an opera role with Servilia in "La Clemenza di Tito" when I was 23, then Gretel from "Hänsel und Gretel" and Baronin Freimann from "Wierdschutz" (?). After two years I changed to heavier repertoire when I went to the Opera House in Bonn, so at 25 I sang la Contessa, Fiordiligi, Mimi, Agathe...

When you went from the lighter repertory to the heavier roles, did you feel that it was a correct thing to do because of the development of your voice? Did your voice teacher tell you that was the path to take?
My voice went naturally to these heavier roles. To take my first steps in the professional stage it was necessary to get one or two steps back to a lighter repertory. It helped my voice to sing that repertory because at the beginning, my voice was not ready to sing heavier roles. In the two years that I was in Gelsenkirche in a professional theater, I took my singing lessons in the high school of music. On Monday, there was a free day in the theater of Gelsenkirche and that was for me the time when I took my singing lessons in Cologne. It was in this singing lessons that I learnt how to sing the Contessa and Fiordiligi and everything.

This marked the beginning of a relationship in your career with one composer who has been, is and will be (we hope) in your repertory for a long time: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. You started singing Servilia and Zerlina (lighter roles) and your voice then evolved and you are now singing Donna Anna, Fiordiligi, La Contessa, which are heavier roles. Do you think Mozart is a key element for young singers and for singers who are in a professional career?
I think Mozart can be a kind of base. If I am able to sing a Contessa really good, in the right way; that shows me that my voice can work with colors,  intrumental clarity and precision but with emotions and feelings; that is the difficulty of Mozart. It has to be precise as an instrument with a beautiful sound.

Speaking of your Contessa in "Le Nozze di Figaro", do you think she is a character that changes from the time she sings "Porgi amor" to the "Dove sono"? Is there an evolution in the vocal aspects of the role or is she is always lyrical?
No, I think the Contessa has many changes in her character. One moment she is very sad and in the next one she is happy and smiling because she is used not to show her sadness to other people because she is LA CONTESSA. She has to be always in control. It is wonderful when we see her in the quick games with Cherubino because she loses a bit her status as a Contessa and in "Porgi amor" she also opens herself and shows us her sadness. For us as an audience to see a Contessa in such a state of sadness is interesting.

Do you think there has been a change in the way that Mozart operas were portrayed and sung in the last 50 years?

Yes, there has been a great change. Look at the role of Pamina, for example. I've never sang the role but I think that if I had lived in the 1950s I would have the right voice for Pamina but today it is not possible for me to sing her with my voice and not to be criticized for it.

You listen a lot to singers like Elisabeth Schwartzkopf and Lisa Della Casa. Coming from that tradition, I think that your portrayals of the roles they sang are more modern now, specially, after seeing you as Donna Anna. You have the lyrical strength and greatness for the "Or sai chi l'onore" and the elegance and the ethereal sound and the coloraturas for the "Non mi dir". There are some Donna Annas that can do one aria ok and the other not so. You can do both perfectly. How do you portray such an ambigous character as Anna?
I think the lyric characters of Mozart are very flexible characters, they have more than one side, they are humans. They can change like the Contessa or Fiordiligi. We, as singers, have to be able to change this changing behaviours not only in the way we act the roles but also in the way we sing them. Anna's arias are two totally different arias; "Non mi dir" has two different parts that can also be perceived as two arias. First you have to solve the technical problems and also you have to work with the aesthetic of the role and that shows that we have to be flexible in our mind when we sing it. I have never sung the Donna Anna as I sang it here in Munich. I developed the character because of this production. In New York I did it in a different way, as in other places. Before a production I always think what I want to do with my role, what are the basic moments of Donna Anna, what is the most important thing of her but then, when I go to the rehearsals, there are moments when I have to change my ideas. For this production in Munich, I changed totally because I couldn't imagine how Donna Anna could kiss Ottavio in an erotic way after singing "Non mi dir".That was shocking and I think I won't do it again but it was an experience.

Another Mozart role that has been associated with you for a long time given your wonderful performances of it is Fiordiligi. It is also a role that has a lot of emotional changes and jumps, from "Come scoglio" to "Per pietá". What can you tell us about your Fiordiligi?
The most important thing of Fiordiligi is when you are an adult, not when you are a young singer. She enjoys to play, to be a young girl and to have all these experiences with men, with her sister. She is the most deep character in the opera; there is a difference between her and Dorabella, who is more girlish. Dorabella likes to have dark thoughts and in her aria "Ah, scostati" she likes to celebrate and say that this is HER moment. It is also a game for her.

How many times have you sang Fiordiligi?
Many times, in Munich, in Lyon, in Bonn, in Frankfurt... about 50 times or more.

Is "Cosí fan Tutte" a team work?
Definetly!

What happens to Fiordiligi at the end? Because she has a beautiful duet with Ferrando where we see that she is falling for him.
Yes, I think that at the end of this opera everyone in it becomes more adult. They've become more mature. With all the games and all the fun, Mozart has a big talent to be tragic. And perhaps the biggest tragedy of the evening is that Fiordiligi loves Ferrando. The Dorabella and Guglielmo thing is just for fun but Fiordiligi and Ferrando have a big problem to solve after the opera.

Going now to a more tragic character that you have portrayed wonderfully in Salzburg's Festival 2006: Elettra in "Idomeneo". It marked one of your biggest successes worldwide because of the importance of being in the production for the Mozart Year. It is a very difficult role because many sopranos fall into portaying her as the crazy woman who is after Idamante. How did you approach the role in this production that was masterfuly directed by Karl-Ernst and Ursel Hermann?
The important thing to portray Elettra is to show her as a Greek tragic figure in the stature of Antigone or Medea. For that, I decided to portray her as a very proud woman, and this pride makes her think that Idamante has to love her and the fact that he doesn't love her is for her an affront. She can't accept this. Elettra is a woman who wants to be loved but maybe she doesn't even love herself. I played her as someone who doesn't love herself very much and who is also interested in power.

In the musical aspects, we go again with the Mozart contrats from "Tutte nel cor vi sento" and "D'Oreste e D'Ajace" to the tender and ethereal "Idol mio". Can you tell us how do you technically manage vocally to arrive fresh to the tour-de-fource that is "D'Oreste D'Ajace"?
Well, that is just a technical problem which you solve by preparing yourself very good. I think the most surprising moment for the role is the "Idol mio" scene. This role is so heavy and so brutal sometimes and then she has this moment that is tender and totally different side of her character. Mozart always surprises us with moments like this!
I arrived to the rehearsals with the Hermanns well prepared because I always like to make my thoughts before. I had the development of the character but in the rehearsals I grew a little bit with my flexibility to become a little bit more lighter. I had the idea of a very strong woman and after I played the craziness and it was a wonderful time of rehearsals. The production is very interesting because it is set in sometime somewhere indefinte. Nothing is real but we get the impression of good theater and this is really a wonderful thing.

Now we go to the second part of the interview and I want to ask you about your Strauss and Wagner roles. Starting with Strauss, you have sung "Arabella" and will be singing your first Marschallin in "Der Rosenkavalier" next year in both San Diego and Munich. Tell us about your views on Strauss music, compared to say, Mozart, and when did you decided to take the iconic role of the Marschallin being yourself still so young!
When something is very difficult in Mozart for me to sing, I have to change just for practicing the Italian language with some German consonants, for example: when I sing "Temerari..." I accentuate the "TEmerari". For the Italians, it sounds horrible, but for the voice it makes the word go to the front of the mouth. I wouldn't do that for Verdi operas, just in Mozart. Maybe because he spoke German as his mother tongue and that is why he wouldn't care in this accents. With Strauss it is very important to have a very hight position of the voice, to have a very high sound and light, to be flexible, to make it bigger or darker. All this flexibility has to exist but always having a high position of the voice.
About my Strauss roles, I've done "Arabella" in Munich some years ago. We had one week of rehearsal, it is a very difficult role from beginning to end, you have to be musically well prepared and have a lot of stamina for such a long evening. It was a very wonderful experience for me to sing it and then I did it in Hamburg. I like to sing it very much but I won't sing it every year.

And in 2011 you will sing you first Marschallin...
Well, now I am 38 years old and the Marschallin was supposed to be 32 in the libretto, she is not such an old woman in the vision of Hofmannstahl and Strauss. This is a role that you can sing when you are an older singer. Perhaps her thoughts are very deep in a psychological and philosophical so it is interesting for a young woman to play it but I think it is not just a point of age is also a point of her character.

You will sing it first in San Diego and then here in Munich...
Yes, in San Diego (which is close to Mexico)! I am coming now from reading the score and I think it needs a lot of work. It is easy to hear but difficult to sing. You have to be so quick because she is like that; for example, in the dialogue with the Baron Ochs, she is speaking, he is speaking then Octavian comes...

And you have one of the most interesting and emotional monologues in all Strauss operas and in opera in general. Have you looked also at the Final Trio which is another big moment in operatic history? Specially because it's the Marschallin that starts it...
Yes, I start it AND I end it! She has the last long note and then she says the "In Gottes Name".

Are you planning another Strauss roles in your future?
Not at the moment. I've thought about Chrisothemis, the Empress in "Frau ohne Schatten" and, of course, about Ariadne in "Ariadne auf Naxos". I have not concrete plans but I get a lot of questions from theaters and Ariadne is always at the top of my list.

Tell us now about your Händel experience singing "Alcina" in Munich. Was this your first approach to the role?
Yes, it was my first approach to Alcina but I had sung Händel before when I was 24. We did a kind of highlights from the most famous arias from Händel and I sang the role of Ricciardo. I love to sing Händel but my voice is not really good for it...

But you did an amazing job singing in that wonderful production! And it was a real Dream Cast with you, Kasarova as Ruggero and Veronica Cangemi as Morgana. Thank God there is a recording of it! How do you feel about this character, Alcina, who is also a tragic figure?
I like to sing it and it made me grew a lot. I didn't know if I was going to be accepted for my interpretation of Händel because I am not a baroque music singer but I tried to find a way of singing it to fit the expectations of the people who like baroque operas. I don't like to sing that music in a very flat way and I told Ivor Bolton which way I wanted to sing it and what things I didn't want to do.

It was like giving your own version of the role, which is wonderful because that is what a great artist does: create. I remember that one critic said about your last aria in "Alcina" that it was the most beautiful musical moment that she had experienced in years. So you did well!
I love this last aria! It is in a dance rhythm, I think a pasacaglia and it is such a sad moment where she loses everything. It is in a very hight tessitura and many sopranos sing it lower because it is very difficult. When you sing it in the high tessitura as it is written, it has a great quality and it is grandious music. It is her catharsis. It is the end but she, being a sorceress, will prevail and perhaps she will go to another island and make other men follow her or maybe go to the moon, who knows! She is a sorceress!

And now, lets go to Wagner. On June 25th, you performed Elsa in Richard Jones' production of "Lohengrin" which you have sung last year to great success and which is now also on DVD. What do you think about the role now that you've sung it twice? Is it true that "Lohengrin" is a kind of Italian opera by Wagner?
Well, I've heard that expression many times and I think that it is not true. What it has to do is with the way the phrases are conceived in the opera, where they end, where the high point of them is. This is a way to work with phrases that you associate more to Italian opera than to German operas. In Wagner, you always have to think about phrases. In "Tannhäuser" (which I've also sung) the sound is more direct, more accentuated, you have to be stronger with your body. Elsa is very lyric, she has to have a very clear, ringing sound.

Do you feel any difference from your first time with the role last year and singing it a year later? Is the role more into your skin now? Are there new layers to your character?
It is all a process and when a role has slept for a year and then you sing it a year after, it comes easier the second time. The first experience with it was more honest because it was all new to me and I wanted it to be all magical and true. In my second time singing it, I knew which parts where more difficult to sing. It also had to do with who my Lohengrin and my Ortrud are because I have to change Elsa's naivite depending on who my partners are. For example, this time I had  Waltraud Meier as Otrud and she did a complete different approach to the role to that of Michaela Schuster. My Elsa couldn't be so naive with Meier's malevolous interpretation of Ortrud.

And what about your two Lohengrins: Jonas Kaufmann, with a darker voice, and Robert Dean Smith, with a more lyrical, light voice?
With Jonas, I love to sing with him, he is a wonderful human being and his baritonal voice is extraordinary. He has a very direct, impression of the role and it was a really wonderful experience for me and I can't wait to sing with him again! But I have to say that the experience of singing with Robert Dean Smith was wonderful because he has a concrete way of understanding what he wants to express with this role. He wants to be the light person, he wants to be from God, an over-human, the luminous character. For this interpretation it is really wonderful that he has a bright sound in his voice and he wants to sing in a light way. It was really wonderful too!

Tell us about your view of the production because there were people who loved it and people who hated it. I think it is interesting and that it has a lot to say about the relationship between Elsa and Lohengrin as a couple.
For me, as Elsa, the Jones production is very helpful because the role is from the moment to the last, on stage. In some productions, we don't realize that she is all the time on stage and we focus more on Lohengrin and loose sometimes Elsa's conflict and development. Richard Jones focused in showing Elsa as a strong person; her qualities that make her so strong are within her. Sometimes they portray her as naive and dumb but that is not true. Many people complain about why she asked the question to Lohengrin but she had to do it to be true to herself and she couldn't have lived with that doubt.

Do you plan to sing her in the future in other opera houses?
No, I don't think so. I think it is a wonderful role for me but I don't need to sing one role all over the world. Many singers do that: they sing one or two roles all over the world and earn a lot of money but for me it won't be interesting to sing it so many times. It is a long opera, a long evening and a very difficult thing for the voice. I showed I can sing it now and it's enough!

It's good that you don't specialize in two or three roles, that you sing many composers and different kind of styles and you don't stay in a comfort zone. You are more like the singers of the past who sang a lot of different roles through their career.
I think it comes with the quality of the voice. When you have a voice that is only good for German fach, then you stay there and not sing Italian opera. Or when your voice is good for Italian opera, you go there. I say that there are two kinds of voices: the "black and white" ones and the "mixture voices". The first one are not better than the other, they are simply those who sing only this or that. The "mixture voices" can sing a more varid repertory, German and Italian, for example, or Old or Modern music. My voice has given me the chance of singing in many fachs and I try to use my knowledge of Mozart when I sing Verdi or my experience from singing Verdi operas when I sing Wagner. It is a very interesting and wonderful development!

Going now to your Verdi roles, you have sung Violetta (which has been captured in a gorgeous recording with Piotr Beczala as Alfredo), Amelia in "Simon Boccanegra" in San Diego, London, La Scala and Berlin with Plácido Domingo, Desdemona, Alice Ford, Elisabetta in "Don Carlo" and...
La Voce del Cielo also in "Don Carlo".... I did it in my first year in Munich. They told me: tomorrow is the final dress rehearsal of "Don Carlo" and you have to sing La Voce del Cielo. I said: Of course, but I don't know this opera! The director told me: Don't worry, it's just one phrase and you have to learn it today and tomorrow you come on stage, I give you a sign and you have to sing. I said yes but the problem was that I was ON stage because usually La Voce del Cielo sings off stage and other conductor tells you when to start singing. Here, I was a part of the choir and I had a black dress, it was very hot and the Auto da Fe has over and over the same theme and it is long and in each part I thought: now I have to sing! I had to wait a long time and the director forgot to give me the entrance! So some of the choir told me: You have to sing now! and I sang... It was not in the RIGHT moment but afterwards the intendant came to me and said: You've got the job, you sing the premiere! It was really funny. My first experience with Verdi!

But later on you did sing the role of Elisabeth in the same opera...
Yes, it was first in Oslo in 2008 for the opening of the new Oslo opera where I also sang in a gala for the official opening of it. "Don Carlo" opened the official production new season. Before the premiere, I was very excited because I was stepping into a heavier and darker Verdi. I felt so good and after the premiere and during all my performances I really felt my voice was very comfortable with this music.

Tell us about your evolution in the role of Violetta. You did it in San Diego, in New York, in Munich...
In San Diego I was too shy and I didn't want to play her as a true courtesan. I wanted to play her as a serious and honest woman so I didn't want to have the light part of her life. I couldn't believe she was happy with that life. That has changed with time: I think that to be a courtesan was really important because she is the most wanted one. To have this character with her real love to Alfredo and show her other part of her life. Maybe also the fact that she has to die, to die with a smile always, has also become part of my interpretation. It is the kind of role that you always find something new, something different of her to play in each performance.

What do you think of her change in the dialogue with Germont?
She changes in a way in which she is not anymore the center of her life. She used to be a bit egocentric and now the love for Alfredo brings her a new way of seeing herself. It is true love but, again, it is a love that is around her. She is again, the center of that universe. But  when Germont speaks to her about his daughter, there is a new person coming to her life and she feels that there is this unknown girl which she has to take care of. It's this unknown daughter of Germont who needs her to "help" her. She reacts then as if she was a mother and she has to chose between the child and the husband. Violetta has to protect this girl maybe because she knows deep inside that Alfredo might leave her for another woman sooner or later so she will do this good deed.

Musically speaking, do you think there is in the opera the famous legend of the "three different" voices of soprano that must sing the three acts?
The point of the three voices is a good point because the role is very difficult to sing and it would be ideal to have the ideal type of voice to sing each of the acts but I think that this can't be. When you sing it, you have to have an evolution from the first act to the last one. I have to do that with my voice by using different colours in my interpretation and show Violetta in all her facets. That is a way of solving the secret of the "three different soprano voices"!

Continuing with your Verdi roles, you've sung Amelia Grimaldi from "Simon Boccanegra" with great success, most recently in La Scala with Plácido Domingo in the title role. When was the first time that you sang this role?
It was in San Diego.

What are your thoughts about this role after having sung it in different productions around the world such as the ones in San Diego, London, Berlin and  La Scala?
First of all, I think "Simon Boccanegra" has really wonderful music and sounds, harmonies; it is very dark, this is one of the difficulties of this opera, specially for the soprano because everybody sounds so dark and it is difficult to then appear and make a girlish sound! Though a girlish sound is not technically wanted, this makes the opera and the role more complicated. The opera is called "Simon Boccanegra" and it's about him. I have to make her a strong character because she is not always on stage as the men, she is not like Violetta. Amelia/Maria Boccanegra is a role that has to be there for the purpose of the story. This opera is also a bit static and the male roles are pompous so it is difficult to establish a close relationship between the characters. There are a lot of political problems in the plot. This is a fight between the men and Amelia is only in the middle and she has to protect her father. It is also a very difficult opera to stage. My experiences with this opera have always been amazing, in San Diego the production was very serious and she was the youthful presence in the plot. In Berlin I did a production where Amelia was in pajama and it was a bit weird... The experience with maestro Domingo was unbelievable because he is such a great artist, a natural person and a wonderful singer. I sang with him the premiere of his first performance ever as Simon in Berlin and maestro Barenboim conducted. It was great!

And you sang it with him again in La Scala and that performance was broadcasted around the world in the cinemas. What do you think of this new way of making opera available for more people and how was your experience singing in La Scala?
The great chance is that many people that don't have the money to go to see operas will take part of them. Also for those who didn't have the idea of going to the opera, maybe after seeing it in a large scale screen, they might end want to see it inside the theater for once. For me, as an artist, I hope that in the voice is good in those performances and that the camera treats me well! When there is a live recording or broadcast is even more exciting than the actual performance. Speaking about my experience in La Scala, I sang last year "Alcina", then I sang Elisabeth in "Tannhäuser" with Zubin Mehta and just three weeks after I did "Simon Boccanegra" so I had the German repertory and the Italian one nearly the same time. The audience of La Scala can be really problematic with a singer when they don't accept you but for me it was a wonderful experience because they accepted me amazingly. They were very excited about my Amelia!

Going now to another Verdi role that you have sung in June in Berlin with José Cura: Desdemona in "Otello".
It was my third Desdemona, with a modern production that many people did not like and some did. It was wonderful to work with José Cura because he is a wonderful artist, he is a very good actor and he has very different facets and experience with the role. For me, Desdemona is not dumb or naive, she is strong yet tender. 

And finally, tell us about Puccini roles. Have you only sang Mimi in "La Bohéme"?
Yes, but I will be singing "Suor Angelica" next year and I will be doing Manon Lescaut and Tosca in the future. I really wanted to grow into this role, it is not good to do it very young because it is not good for the voice. Many singers underestimate singing Puccini. He depends on the great emotions and you have to sing it with very good technique.

Any future plans you want to share with us?
Well, as I said before, I am singing the "Marschallin" next year, Suor Angelica, Leonora in "Il Trovatore" and many more....

Thank you so much for this interview, Ms. Harteros.
Thanks to you!

Ingrid Haas