Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan studied voice with Mary Morrison at the University of Toronto, graduating with a Masters in Music in 1998. Further studies led her to the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Steans Institute in Ravinia, and the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. As an opera singer she commands a wide repertoire ranging from Handel and Hasse through Gluck and Mozart to Stravinsky’s Ann Trulove and the title roles in Janáček’s The Cunning Vixen and Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia. But Hannigan is known above all as an internationally sought-after performer of contemporary music. She has given the world premieres of many works, including Louis Andriessen’s Writing to Vermeer, Michel van der Aa’s One, Gerald Barry’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, and, most recently, in May 2011, Toshio Hosokawa’s Matsukaze. At the end of the year she will perform Gepopo in Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, reprising a role in which she appeared in 2009 at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie. In the concert arena, works of modern music are also a priority for Hannigan. Under the direction of Peter Eötvös she has sung the solo part in Ligeti’s Aventures and Nouvelles Aventures, and she has performed the composer’s Requiem with Jonathan Nott at the Salzburg Festival and with the Berlin Philharmonic. One of her signature pieces is Correspondances of Henri Dutilleux, which she has performed with Reinbert de Leeuw, Sakari Oramo, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Kurt Masur, and Simon Rattle at the podium. Since the 2005-06 season she has been concertizing with Maurizio Pollini, giving performances in Tokyo, Vienna, Rome, Brussels, and Paris, and at La Scala in Milan. George Benjamin is currently writing a new opera for her, which will have its premiere in 2012 in Aix-en-Provence; in the 2011-12 season Hannigan will also make her role debut as Alban Berg’s Lulu in Brussels.
LUCERNE FESTIVAL debut on 24 August 2008 as part of the Pollini Project in works by Luigi Nono.
August 2011