Anja Harteros nominated Singer of the year 2015 !

When I read Anja Harteros received  this international award from Opera International I really felt happy yesterday !
This exceptionnal singer who has no mediatic aura out of the classical music field has now an international recognition, so much deserved !
I cannot compare her to  any other soprano in the opera star system because she never plays the game in the fashion, cosmetics or gossip fields.
But what is certain is the tremendous beauty of her voice whenever I managed to see her sing and act.
I have often tried to describe her way of singing: no doubt she is a great artist with an immense energy to tackle new roles and bring them to  such degree of perfection   with dramatic emotional strength which dazzles me anytime I am in the audience.
This season I have planned to see her as much as possible in her various appearances : the Verdi Requiem in Milan, then Aïda in Rome, her Marschallin in Dresden and just now her Elsa at the Deutsch Oper.  I will be at the Bayerische Staatsoper in July for her Arabella.
 Next season will come and hopefully I will see her in Paris !
Lohengrin has been in my childhood memory since the 50's. I cannot recall the exact moment when, but I remember the setting at  Marseille Opera House:
the Swan was   a cardboard white vessel where the Knight appeared pulled by a hidden rope as the swan was on rails.
When Lohengrin called his swan back, it came. Lohengrin boarded  but the mechanism got stuck and it lingered on stage too long... I felt a bit upset by the non magical effect of his departure, compared to

his arrival and the laughters around me that this situation stirred up. 
 It meant a lot for me to attend this Lohengrin  in Berlin on April the 19th with what was the best possible cast at the moment and  with  my elder granddaughter by my side!
Anja Harteros  has the looks for Elsa and the voice of course !

 Ortrud sung by Waltraud Meier confronted this frail Elsa !  They both acted and sang in the best possible way and I loved their contrasted roles. Elsa seemed to me more human, with more will power in some way.
 The  tall and blond Elsa  (yes indeed, Anja had a blond wig,  she hardly wears a wig, her hair beeing naturally so beautiful, in a Cecilia Bartoli's style actually!) was in white like a character out of a Medieval painting and she almost had the  gait of these medieval virgins with their large sleeves  flying around when they move) She was  facing a pagan sorceress who looked stronger and feline in her reddish long hair, a true witch with devilish powers to bring back Elsa on her side and make her her slave. She nearly won but lost her husband.  The summons of the trumpets were triumphant in the first act, and the violins exquiste when the Knight appeared and left. K. F. Vogt was really well matched with Anja Harteros. He has an angel voice in this role and ' Im fernem land' was a very soft romance.
Each act was applauded with warmth and the singers came at the curtain. But the end finsihed in dead silence on a terrible vision of a murdered baby in Elsa's arms. The fantastic Waltraud Meier had done pagan rites around the chalk traces of a child corpse, the murdered Duke, Elsa's brother I thought, and these traces were washed out during the wedding scene, this endless wedding which seemed to never happen. I did not quite understand the end actually.  Kasper Holten has imagined an ending of his own.
But when the curtain raised again, the applause thundered!
Now I rejoice for a soprano I admire an appreciate a lot for the beauty and elegance of her singing that night and all the nights I had the pleasure to listen to her in an opera house.

(photos@ Yvette Deutsch Oper Curtain calls 2015-IV-19)..