Barbara Hannigan Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan is a frequent guest with the Berlin Philharmonic and has appeared with many of the world’s other leading orchestras. She is making her Cleveland Orchestra debut with performances this week in Cleveland and New York City. Much sought after in contemporary music, Ms. Hannigan has devoted an extraordinary amount of her life to singing the music of our time, and has given over 80 world premières. She has worked extensively with composers including György Ligeti, Pierre Boulez, Henri Dutilleux, Gerald Barry, George Benjamin, Pascal Dusapin, Salvatore Sciarrino, and Hans Abrahamsen. Her recording of Abrahamsen’s let me tell you is scheduled for release by the Winter & Winter label in 2016. Ms. Hannigan made her own conducting début in 2011 at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris with Stravinsky’s Renard, and has since conducted orchestras including the Prague Philharmonic, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Gothenburg Symphony, WDR Orchester Cologne, Helsinki Philharmonic, Toronto Symphony, and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Her conducting debut at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam was awarded
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the Ovatie prize as best classical music concert of 2014. As a singing actor, her operatic repertoire includes her highly praised work as Berg’s Lulu at La Monnaie in Brussels, La Voix humaine at Paris Opera, Marie in Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten at the Munich Staatsoper, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, also at La Monnaie, and Agnes in Benjamin’s Written on Skin at London’s Royal Opera House, Paris’s Opéra Comique, and Lincoln Center (among other major locations). She will make her role début as Mélisande in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande in summer 2016 in a new production at Aix-enProvence directed by Katie Mitchell and conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. For her performances in 2012 and 2013, she was named Singer of the Year by Opernwelt magazine, and “Musical Person of the Year” by the Syndicate of the French Press. Her 2013 Deutsche Grammophon recording of Dutilleux’s Correspondances won the Gramophone Award, an Edison, and France’s Victoires de la Musique. She was awarded Germany’s Faust Theatre Prize 2015 for her portrayal of Marie in Die Soldaten. Barbara Hannigan earned bachelor and master of music degrees at the University of Toronto. Her life as an artist is the subject of two recent documentary portrait films (by Swiss TV/Accentus and NTR Nederland), as well as the subject of Mathieu Amalric’s short film C’est presque au bout du monde. For further information, visit www. barbarahannigan.com.
Guest Artist
The Cleveland Orchestra