Mezzo-soprano Bernarda Fink was born to Slovenian parents in Buenos Aires, where she studied voice at the Instituto Superior de Arte del Teatro Colón. After winning first prize at the Nuevas Voces Liricas Competition in 1985, she moved to Europe. She soon developed a reputation as a concert singer whose repertoire spans from the Baroque to the 20th century. Fink has appeared with the Vienna, Berlin, London, and Czech Philharmonics, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, as well as with many leading Baroque ensembles. She has worked with such conductors as Colin Davis, John Eliot Gardiner, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, René Jacobs, Mariss Jansons, Riccardo Muti, Simon Rattle, and Franz Welser-Möst. In Europe Fink has also continued the stage career she began at the Teatro Colón. Of particular note are her appearances as Cecilio in a Viennese production of Mozart’s Lucio Silla under Nikolaus Harnoncourt, as Idamante in a staging of Idomeneo by Luc Bondy at the Teatro Real Madrid, and as Irene in Handel’s Theodora at the Salzburg Festival. Credits in the 2011-12 season have included performances in Mozart’s Requiem under Mariss Jansons in Amsterdam, Mahler’s Second Symphony with Simon Rattle in Berlin and New York, and Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang under Riccardo Chailly in Leipzig. Fink has also sung lieder recitals at Wigmore Hall in London and at the Schubertiade in Schwarzenberg; she additionally toured Europe with Brahms’s Liebeslieder Waltzes. Her discography includes almost 50 recordings that have won many prizes, among them a Grammy Award for Handel’s Giulio Cesare and the Diapason d’Or for her recording of Dvorák songs. In 2006 Bernarda Fink received the Austrian Honorary Medal for Art and Science.

LUCERNE FESTIVAL debut on 3 April 2004 in the Mozart Requiem under Mariss Jansons.

August 2012