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The German mezzo-soprano, Martina Borst, studied singing with Elsa Cavelti at the Musikhochschule Frankfurt and with Carla Castellani in Milan. She is a winner of the VDMK competition.
Martina Borst was member of the opera houses of Mannheim, Dortmund and Hannover, where she has developed a wide repertoire of roles, including almost all the main parts from Orpheus to Komponist and Oktavian, with conductors such M.A. Marelli, Ruth Berghaus, Nicolas Brieger, Willy Decker, and Nikolaus Lehnhoff.
Guest engagements have led Martina Borst to the opera houses of Berlin (Deutsche Oper and Staatsoper), Munich, Vienna, Dresden, Bonn, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Geneva, Liège, Parma, Modena, Ravenna and Buenos Aires, among others, where she has worked with notable conductors like Gary Bertini, James Conlon, Eliahu Inbal, Lorin Maazel, Donald Runnicles, Peter Schneider, Marcello Viotti, Bruno Weil, and Alberto Zedda. In Vienna she sang Dorabella in a new production of Cosi fan tutte, noted from the ORF. Further engagements have taken her to Music Festivals like the Festspiele in Salzburg (Elektra; Lorin Maazel), Bregenz (Niklas in Tales of Hoffmann), Ludwigsburg (La Clemenza di Tito and Semele), and also to Schwetzingen (Jommelli: Demofoonte and Giovanni Battista Pergolesi: Stabat mater). At the Teatro Regio in Parma and other opera houses in Italy, she sung the Italian first performance of Idomeneo as Idamante, conductor Thomas Hengelbrock.
More recently, Martina Borst made her debut with the parts of the Countess Geschwitz (Lulu), Jezibaba (Rusalka) and Julius Caesar. In November 2005 she could be heard in the part of the Countess in Siegfried Wagner’s opera Der Kobold. In march 2006 she was on stage with the Baltic Opera Gdansk as Oktavian in various german opera houses.
Martina Borst has appeared in the major concert halls of Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Stuttgart, Munich, Leipzig, Paris, Brussels, Prague, Vienna, Turin, Rome, Moscow and Barcelona. Invitations to Concert Festivals have taken her to the Dresden Music Festival, International Bach Academy in Stuttgart, Rheingau-Festival, Beethoven Festival in Bonn, Bach Festival Munich, Wiener Kunstverein (Schubertiade), Richard-Strauss-Tage, Herbstlichen Music Days in Bad Urach, and so forth. As a concert singer she has appeared with versatile repertoire up to the modern time many in important concert halls of Europe and has made music alongside conductors like Frieder Bernius, Michael Gielen, Hartmut Haenchen, Thomas Hengelbrock, Bernhard Klee, Peter Neumann and Hanns-Martin Schneidt. In 2005 she accepted an invitation to sing concerts with J.S. Bach and George Frideric Handel
works at the German-Chinese Cultural Week in Shianghai.
Martina Borst also feels closely connected with Lieder singing and gave Lieder recitals for example at the Hugo Wolf Society Stuttgart with Hartmut Höll and Eric Schneider, with the NDR Hannover and with the Classix Festival Braunschweig.
Of her numerous CD-recordings, mention should especially be made of Cosi fan tutte (conductor Wolfgang Gönnenwein), G.B. Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, Paul Hindemith’s Neues vom Tage, and of her recording of Jommelli’s La Didone abbandonata which received special appreciation from the music magazine Gramophone, and of the Mass in E flat major of Schubert, which awarded the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis. La Cenerentola under the direction of Alberto Zedda has just come out (Naxos). Additionally, television productions for ORF (Cosi fan tutte) and ARD and ZDF, as well as numerous radio recordings amply document Martina Borsts rich artistic output. |
