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Biography |
by Joseph Stevenson
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Birgit Remmert is a well-known German alto/contralto/mezzo-soprano singer with a wide repertory.
She studied at the Detmold Conservatory with Professor Helmut Kretschmer. Upon graduation, she immediately began receiving engagements to sing. She debuted in an unusual work, Heinrich von Biber's Requiem, under the direction of Nikolaus Harnoncourt.
Another of her notable early appearances was in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony under Harnoncourt in London, then in the Styrarte Festival, a performance ultimately released on compact disc.
In 1989, she took the title role of Othmar Schoeck's Penthesilea in the Festival de Montpellier.
She won the German Music Critics' Prize and Golden Palm award of Ligure in the song recital category. Her debut recital showed her wide musical interest and knack for intriguing program building by including songs of Brahms, Baur, Clara Schumann, Samuel Barber, and Pyotr Tchaikovky.
Offers followed that brought her to sing in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, and Poland. She joined the Zürich Opera in the 1992-1993 season. Her roles in her debut year were the Third Lady in The Magic Flute, Suzuki in Madama Butterfly, Dame Quickly in Falstaff, Zita in Gianni Schicchi, and Ulrica in Un Ballo in Maschera. The last-named of those is one of her most often-repeated roles.
She made her debut at the Hamburg State Opera in 1993 as Erda in Wagner's Siegfried, and the next year added to her repertory that goddess' other appearance in Wagner's Ring, in Das Rheingold.
She sang in the Salzburg Festival of 1993 as Nutrice in Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea and has gone on to add the roles of the Old Princess in Puccini's Soeur Angelica and Offenbach's La Perichole.
She also sings recitals frequently, and as a concert singer, has in her repertory, among other items Masses of Johann Sebastian Bach, Mendelssohn's Erste Walputrgisnacht, and Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde. She has song with the Berlin Philharmonic, The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the London Philharmonic, and the Vienna Philharmonic under such conductors as Philippe Herreweghe, Carlo Maria Giulini, Riccardo Chailly, Claudio Abbado, Simon Rattle, Kent Nagano, and Wolfgang Sawallisch.
In May of 1995, she was selected to participate in the prestigious complete Mahler project of the Royal Concertgebouw.
She moved into one of the darker soprano roles as Fricka in Wagner's Rheingold and Walküre at the Bayreuth Festival in 2000. |
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