Brigitte Fassbaender

With one of the greatest voices of the latter half of the 20th century, German mezzo-soprano Brigitte Fassbaender has had a career like few others, going from being the definitive Octavian of her generation to opera director with more than 80 productions to her name, as well as administrator, teacher and coach for young singers. Born in Berlin in 1939, Fassbaender might have seemed destined for the lyric stage – her father was leading baritone Willi Domgraf-Fassbaender and her mother the actress Sabine Peters. It was, however, straight theatre that originally attracted her, and only when her voice – a dark, burnished mezzo – started to emerge in her late teens did she began to study singing with her father, then a teacher at the Nuremberg Conservatory. She moved to Munich, where in 1961 she joined the Bayerische Staatsoper, singing several small roles before her first appearance in a major part, that of Nicklausse in Les Contes d'Hoffmann. Her breakthrough role was Clarice in Rossini's La pietra del paragone in 1964, but it was the character of the lovelorn teenager Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier that three years later launched her international career, initially in Munich (where she later made the role unquestionably her own in legendary performances under Carlos Kleiber), then at Covent Garden and the Met. She was the youngest ever singer to be made Kammersängerin with the Bayerische Staatsoper, in 1970, and over the next two decades, Munich saw most of her great roles, from Mozart to Strauss. At the same time, she made regular appearances at Salzburg, Vienna and Bayreuth, and amassed a formidable discography in a wide range of repertoire. Fassbaender was a tireless Lieder recitalist, and her recordings include the great Schubert and Schumann cycles – she was one of the first women to record Winterreise – as well as songs by Strauss, Liszt, and Mussorgsky. After retiring from the stage in 1995, she embarked on a second career as stage director, first in Braunschweig, then Innsbruck, before serving as Artistic Director of the annual Richard Strauss Festival in Garmisch-Partenkirchen between 2009 and 2017. Fassbaender has also written the book and lyrics for two hit musicals, Lulu – Das Musical and Shylock!, and published her memoirs in 2019. Today, she continues to direct and give masterclasses, passing on her wealth of knowledge and experience to new generations of artists. She was appointed honorary Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur by the French Government in 2011, was chosen by Chancellor Merkel to be cultural ambassador when Germany hosted the G7 summit in 2015, and in 2016, received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the annual International Opera Awards. Looking back over her years as a singer, she has said, "You have to treat every performance as a spiritual, mental and physical adventure. Then, perhaps, it works. It certainly doesn't work if all you want to do is stand there and sing beautifully. That was never my ambition – I wanted to rip my heart out of my chest … For me, giving everything on stage was an existential necessity."