MUSIC + L.IFE

L.OOKING FORWARD THERE ARE SOPRAN OS who dazzle audiences Waltons Parade for two narrator-conductors. with their technical virtuosity and glamorous Rattle, who has worked with Hannigan presence. There are sopranos who go down in since 2006, admits he wouldn't have had the Contemporary history as muses to composers of their time. courage to put on a piece that is "so British" in And then there are sopranos such as Barbara Berlin if it weren't for her incredible charisma. Diva, Maestra Hannigan, who fearlessly defy the boundaries "When you first meet Barbara you think, 'Oh, of contemporary performance. The Canadian what a nice, serious person' You don't realize The mysteries of Barbara Hannigan soprano, at just over forty, has premiered nearly that shes carrying around a whole menagerie eighty works, some of which she played a role of volcanoes inside her;' he says. "Everybody By Rebecca Schmid in commissioning. Composers such as George here is simply in awe of someone who can Benjamin and have written operas do things so perfectly and with no kind of spedfically for her. She has been balanced self-regard. She risks absolutely everything" upside down and lifted above dancers' heads Rattle says that although Hannigan is prob- in new stage works. She has performed in ev- ably a musician with much more breadth, she erything from a dominatrix costume to pointe reminds him of Cathy Berberian - vocalist- shoes. And last season the soprano took up the composer, virtuosie experimental performer, baton, first Ligeti and Stravinsky in wife and muse ofLuciano Berio-who Helsinki and Paris, then devising pro grams for premiered works by Cage, Stravinsky, Defiant. Barbara orchestras such as the Gothenburg Symphony Milhaud and Maderna, not to mention a Hannigan as the title and the Orchestra della Toscana. special version of Parade Walton penned for role in Berg's z z In December she conducted achamber her. "Hannigan is now the singer you go to -c (2012, La Monnaie; ::;; Krysztof Warlikowski, ensemble of the Berlin Philharmonie, sharing when you want something extraordinary and (; :t: director) the podium with in William outlandish and contemporary" says Rattle.

L.lSTEN: L.lFE WITH CLASSICAL MUSIC • 27 MUSIC + LIFE. LOOKING FORWARD

The soprano speaks to an era of hyphenate artistry. It is no longer unusual for a singer or performer, male or female, to compose, direct, or choreograph - even the previous generation had Meredith Monk and Ioan La Barbara. Yet while such divos as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and Placido Domingo have picked up the baton, female opera singers of international standing have been conspicuously absent from the podium. One exception, the contralto Nathalie Stutzmann, fulfilled a dream by founding her own chamber orchestra in 2009. In Hannigan's case, it was the artistic director of the Presences Festival in Paris who urged her to take up the vocation upon noticing that, save for gesturing with her arms, she used her body like a conductor. Curled up on a daybed in her dressing room after rehearsal at Berlin's Philharmonie in December, the soprano explained that 'Do I really want to be singing something where conducting is in many ways an extension of her work as a singer. She has always studied everyone is waitingfor high Fs? Or do Iwant to the entire orchestral score when preparing a forge my own path?' piece, determining which instrument she will want to join or lead with her own sound. "I think there was a need inside to see if this Matsukaze, which premiered in Brussels two Hannigans dancer persona found another was possible," she says. "But I didn't suddenly seasons ago and will make its American debut outlet in her debut as Lulu at the Theätre de have to learn to use my body. I needed to at the Spoleto Festival this summer. When la Monnaie in Brussels last fall, when stage expand and refine how I used it" She also the "choreographed opera" about two sisters' director KrzysztofWarlikowski asked her to notes that with so many more women on the wandering souls played Berlin, Hannigan's wear pointe shoes as she sang Bergs breakneck podium now-from Emmanuelle Halm to fluid grace as she wrapped her voice around vocallines. "It was a question of mind over Susanna Mälkki - today's younger listeners unpredictable melodie leaps was, for this matter:' she says. "Yes, it was painful and no, don't consider a female conductor as unusual viewer, the most impressive aspect of the I haven't trained to do it, but I just thought, as her generation once did. "What is interest- production. The singer credits Waltz for free- "Ihis is Lulu and this is her dream and she ing about any conductor is their ability to ing her body and allowing her to overcome the wants to be able to do this and therefore incorporate both the male and the female in preconception that one has to have aperfect, I'm doing it," Hannigan's connection to the their gesture. I think I just happen to have this tiny figure to dance (the choreographer, in character was so strong that she found herself body, but that doesn't really matter. We go turn, says Hannigan moves like a dancer grieving after the performance ended. "When beyond that when we're making music" despite her lack of formal training). For Waltz, I realized I couldn't be her again, it was like I'd Hannigan took a similar plunge in working who stages some of her own works, the vocal lost my friend. Even more, like my lover had with choreographer in 2010 arts and choreography can form a single line. left me" George Benjamin, who created the on the opera Passion; the "I find the boundaries between the different female protagonist in his recently unveiled soprano received morning lessons in Klein genres difficult," she says. "One hears the voice opera, [see '1\ Few Days in technique, which works muscles deeplyand differently through its interaction with dance Provence," Val. 4, No. 4), for Hannigan, says increases awareness of anatomy, then focused in a certain space. It is, of course, important to she submerged herself in the role - Agnes, a on improvisation and choreography into have a specialty and to have studied something landowners repressed wife - to an almost the evening. Hannigan and Waltz continued thoroughly, but the new relationship can make frightening degree: "I found the depth ofher their collaboration with 's something even more fruitful" engagement extraordinary. And the role is

28 • SPRING 2013 MUSIC + LIFE At the podium. Hannlgan made her conducting debut with Stravinsky's Renard (The Fox) at Chätelet, Paris.

demanding, technically and emotionally" wholesome, blonde and blue-eyed offstage

Hannigan could have carved out a presence with the sultry hysteria of her POETRY career singing the glamorous bel canto performance. She jokes that the Mysteries, a roles to whieh coloratura sopranos of her suite of three arias Ligeti devised out of the ilk usually aspire. But she discovered a opera and she and RattIe Museie Memory passion for contemporary musie early in will perform stateside with the Philadelphia her studies in Toronto, premiering her Orchestra in May, has become what the I half-remember an item I once read first work at seventeen. After her first Messiah is to most singers' careers. She has (my mind's a drippy colander, I'm afraid) professional gig singing Die Zauberfläte's sung the suite more than fifty times, indud- about , who said, Queen of the Night, she realized, "Do I ing in the late composer's presence. After at least I think, that often when he played really want to be singing something where he heard Hannigan sing the work for the everyone is waiting for high Fs? Or do I first time in rehearsal, Ligeti, who had no a passage he found particularly tough - want to forge my own path?" Ultimately, qualms about expressing dissatisfaction with so fierce, in fact, he'd stumble in the middle - her curiosity led her down the latter. "Its a performance, walked to the front of stage that's when he hadn't got it deep enough a funny diehotomy, but doing the modern with his arms outstretched. "You learned my into his body. So, he'd re-ohln his fiddle, repertoire somehow made me feel safe. I piece," he said. "Thank you" trust myself with this music," She empha- Hannigan explains matter-of-factly that start again, but greener this time, at ease, sizes, however, that she is very pieky about she went inside the piece and did what he like leggy daffodils in spackllng rain, which composers she champions. While asked. "As far as I'm concerned, bis scores gyrating widely, swaying in his knees, she is drawn to some established figures, say exactly what he wanted," she says. "But while mindlessly removing any strain she is also committed to performing the you really must take a risk, because he took musie of unknowns such as Philippe a risk writing it" This dramatic fearlessness from wrists and elbows, spinal column, nape. Schoeller. Hannigan will premiere an has allowed the soprano to build bridges By letting go his false holds, he became orchestral work of his with the Orchestre to the often doistered world of the avant- thrum's conduit, the music's mortal shape, Philharmonique de Radio France in [une. garde - not unlike Cathy Berberian, who until the two were, for a time, the same. "I can't really say why I champion one strove to break down walls between prima composer over another," she muses. "It's donna and audience, whether presenting Which proves that tissues know more than like loving. You just know." Next season, the raw, everyday sounds developed in we know, she and the Berlin Philharmonie will her theory of the New Vocality or singing the way a run of triplets will outpace unveil Hans Abrahamsens orchestral baroque arrangements ofBeatles songs. In our thinking yet still answer to the bow. setting of texts from the a pro gram Hannigan devised last year as Just so: the melody can hide a place - novel Let Me Tell You - arearrangement singer-conductor with the Orchestra della of Shakespeare's words for Ophelia into a Toscana, an ensemble founded by Berio, she Ludlow and Stanton streets, the tympanie din first-person narrative-whose commis- paired Ligeti with Mozart and Rossini on of a tequila bar. That's in the rnuslc, too, sion Hannigan initiated. the theme of madness. "All these composers a Bach partita for solo violin The soprano has certainly kept the Berlin evoke a kind of whirlwind, brilliant, virtuoso I heard later, on that first night out with you. Philharmonie on its toes. When she per- excitement" she says. 'Tve absolutely got my formed Ligeti's Mysteries of the Macabre with finger on the pulse on with whom I'm work- Hearing lt now, us both, after so long, the orchestra for the first time, she surprised ing and what I'm singing. I must be the one we appeal to our ears' odd ability RattIe by showing up in seven-inch-heel to pick and choose and decide how it's going to recal! the buzz embedded in that song, boots, black wig and leather overcoat with to go. And it's always been like thaf' _ unplayed for years but with us bodily. bodice underneath - her signature costume for the piece, also when conducting. "r - David Yezzi thought it was my very Berlin hairdresser coming in;' he recalls with astonishment, adding that it was fortunate the players had a chance to see her before the performance so that they're weren't too shocked. It is indeed not easy to reconcile Hannigan's

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