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The German mezzo-soprano, Margarete Joswig, studied the piano at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt am Main, before entering the opera class, where Elsa Cavelti, Gisela Pohl and Charles Spencer were her teachers (1994-2000). A number of master-classes and personal training with Brigitte Fassbaender, Laura Sarti, Montserrat Figueras and Rudolf Piernay completed her studies.
In 1994 Margarete Joswig joined the ensemble of the Staatstheater Saarbrücken (1994-2003), where she made her debut as Hänsel in Engelbert Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel. During the following years she sang Orfeo (Gluck), Dorabella, Idamante (Mozart), Rosina, Isabella, Cenerentola (Rossini), Magdalene (Wagner), Maddalena, Fenena (Verdi), Maria (Gesualdo, Schnittke), and Oktavian (Strauss). From 2000 to 2003 she became a member of the Stuttgart Opera, where she sang major mezzo-soprano roles. In 2002 she was invited to the Teatro Massimo in Palermo for Victor Ullmanns’ opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis. Since 2003, she has been working as a freelance opera singer; among others in Palermo, Naples, Rome, Paris, also in concert, among others at Bayerischer Rundfunk and the Rheingau Music Festival. In 2003 she sang the Floßhilde in the TV broadcast of Richard Wagner's Das Rheingold. In 2003 she won high acclaim at the Herbstliche Musiktage Bad Urach in the world premiere of Siegfried Wagner’s unknown opera Rainulf und Adelasia, in which she sang the part of Sigilgaita. Other recordings include Francesco Durante's Lamentationes Jeremiae Prophetae, and Dvořák’s Stabat Mater. She has also appeared in concert and Lieder, with a wide repertoire from J.S. Bach to contemporary composers. In 2004 she was a soloist in Gustav Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde at the Châtelet in Paris together with the tenor Jonas Kaufmann and the conductor Dietrich Henschel. In 2008 she sang at the opening concert of the Frankfurt Mendelssohn Days together with the Frankfurter Singakademie and other performers. At the Teatro San Carlo in Naples she appeared as Waltraute in Die Walküre under the baton of Jeffrey Tate.
Then, for roughly a decade, while raising her three children, Margarete Joswig put her career on hold, apart from a few concerts. After her prolonged absence from the operatic stage, Joswig returned in 2015 and 2016, as the Mother in in E. Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel and as Fricka in Wiesbaden and as Fricka in Uwe Eric Laufenberg's production of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Hessian State Theater in Wiesbaden (2016-2017 season).
Margarete Joswig lives near Munich and was married to the tenor Jonas Kaufmann. The couple has three children. They divorced in 2014. |
