Karajan singer returns to Berlin stage
mainThe Bulgarian soprano Anna Tomowa-Sintow, who owed her career to a close working relationship with Herbert von Karajan is to make a Berlin comeback next March. It has been announced that she will appear in Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride under Daniel Barenboim’s baton in Berlin and Milan at the age of 72.
Doesn’t sound like you’re too convinced of her ability, Mr. Lebrecht…
“Owed her career to a close working relationship with Herbert von Karajan”? Really? Isn’t it rather that Tomowa-Sintow owed her career to her gorgeous voice and immaculate artistry?
Yes she worked with Karajan but she worked with a lot of other important conductors too on a regular basis. Covent Garden’s incomplete on-line records show appearances with Colin Davis, Haitink, Andrew Davis and Simone Young; At the Met she sang with Pritchard, Leinsdorf, Levine, Tate, Thielemann, Chung among others. Elsewhere with Sawallisch, Muti, Kleiber, Stein, Masur…
In her prime she was a lovely singer and a wonderfully honest stage performer. I have the greatest respect for her.
You’ve gotten to the essence of her artistry that has always appealed to me: wonderfully honest performer. I saw her sing this role in the actual Berlin run, and while her voice reveals the passage of time, there are still flashes of the sensual quality that helped define her sound. But everything else about her is undimmed. She conveyed an honest heartiness that is so utterly engaging. Definitely one of the “makes me glad to be alive” singers.
I first heard Ms. Tomowa-Sintow when I stayed up very late to videotapea performance of Capriccio off of channel 13 here in New York. And that was under the baton of Horst Stein. True, she made some very fine recordings with Karajan (the Rosenkavalier comes immediately to mind) but she is a great artist and IMHO underrated no matter who is waving their arms in front of her.
This has happened already: the première was two months ago in Berlin.
Anyone who claims that she owes her career to “a close working relationship with Herbert von Karajan” must be willfully mischaracterizing Anna Tomowa-Sintow, and is suspect of other gaps in knowledge.
Her career owes to the astonishing technique and sumptuous voice.