Curtain Call

Sopran Diana Damrau
Tenor Andrei Skliarenko
Bariton Yuriy Hadzetskyy
Bass Brent Michael Smith

Klavier Adrian Kelly

Over Christmas and New Year's Eve, with the generous support of Zürich Versicherungen and Freunde der Oper Zürich, we present the «Curtain Call» series. Prominent singers meet at eye level with the up-and-coming talents of the International Opera Studio and create a concert evening together. This concert series is also the prelude to our anniversary year – 60 years of Freunde der Oper Zürich and 60 years of the International Opera Studio.

The Videos are available until Sunday, January 17 2021, 24.00.

On the world's great stages, Diana Damrau is celebrated as a master of bel canto and as the queen of coloratura; at Zurich Opera House, she has appeared as Donizetti's Maria Stuarda, among other roles. But the soprano has long been passionate about more than just opera; she is also an enthusiastic interpreter of the Lied - an intimate form that she herself once described as "miniature opera" or "small atmospheric pearls" that can tell stories, indeed create a world in just a few notes.

In her master class, Diana Damrau will therefore concentrate entirely on working out songs. Songs can educate their interpreters to discipline in the best sense of the word, because in song singing it is a matter of shaping the finest details in dialogue with the piano and finding very special vocal colors. The work on the text also stands in the foreground in a special way in song interpretation. The decisive factor, however, is that the young interpreters from the International Opera Studio ultimately find their own, very personal approach to the songs.

One musical focus of Diana Damrau's master class is the songs of Richard Strauss. Just how well she knows this composer and how much she deserves to be recognized as an outstanding Strauss interpreter was recently demonstrated once again by her CD recording of the Four Last Songs.
 

«Curtain Call» is presented by    
The workshops are made possible through the support of the Friends of Zurich Opera.

Diana Damrau appears courtesy of Warner Classics.