Gundula Janowitz

Gundula Janowitz (born August 2, 1937) is a German-born Austrian lyric soprano singer of operas, oratorios, lieder, and concerts. She is one of the most renowned opera singers of the 20th century and was pre-eminent in the 1960s and 1970s. Janowitz was born in Berlin, but grew up in Graz, Austria, where she became a naturalised Austrian. She studied at the Graz Conservatory in Austria, and had already begun to sing at the highest level by the end of the 1950s (Haydn's The Creation, with Herbert von Karajan in 1960). In 1959, Karajan engaged her as Barbarina in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro at the Vienna State Opera, of which she became a permanent member in 1962. During the 1960s and 1970s, Janowitz became one of the most popular singers in her field internationally and she developed a comprehensive discography of works ranging from Bach to Richard Strauss. Those eminent conductors with whom she performed included Karajan, but also Otto Klemperer, Eugen Jochum, Leonard Bernstein, Rafael Kubelík, Karl Böhm, Georg Solti, and Carlos Kleiber. One of the emphases of Janowitz's work was the development of song recitals, which she gave several times at the Salzburg Festivals. Following her vocal career, she was active as a vocal teacher. In 1990, she temporarily took over the position of Opera Director in Graz. In 1978, Janowitz was awarded the Joseph Marx Music Prize of the state of Styria, Austria, named for the composer Joseph Marx. Most unusually, she was given the title Kammersängerin twice: first in 1969 in Vienna, and again in 1974 in Berlin. Janowitz appeared on many of the great stages of the world, including Glyndebourne Festival Opera, the Bayreuther Festspiele, the Salzburg Easter Festivals, the Metropolitan Opera, the Paris Opéra, the Teatro alla Scala and the Royal Opera House. In 1980, she sang the part of the Countess in a now legendary new production of Le nozze di Figaro (with Georg Solti as conductor, Giorgio Strehler as director and Ezio Frigerio as set designer). Her recording of Schubert's Lieder for female voice has been twice awarded Germany's Deutscher Schallplattenpreis. Janowitz's farewell to the operatic stage was on May 18, 1990, at the Vienna State Opera in the title role of Ariadne auf Naxos (with Heinrich Hollreiser as conductor, and Filippo Sanjust as director and designer). She kept singing Lieder recitals until 1997, when she completely retired from performing. As well as being an honorary member of the Vienna State Opera and of the Academy of Music in Graz, she was appointed an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music in London in 2000.