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The German soprano, Gabriele Rossmanith, learned as a child flute, piano and violin, and took singing lessons just to improve her vocal technique. She studied violin with Roman Schimmer at the Musikhochschule Trossingen, earning a first degree. She then began her vocal training with Sylvia Geszty, the well-known singer and professor, at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart, completed her studies in 1984. In 1985 she was awarded the 1st Prize at the Mozart Festival Competition in Würzburg.
From 1985 to 1988 Gabriele Rossmanith was engaged at the Badische Staatstheater in Karlsruhe. Since the 1988/89 season she has been a soprano member of the solo ensemble at the Hamburgische Staatsoper (Hamburg State Opera). She enjoyed there considerable success in such roles as Morgana in Alcina, Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro, Despina in Così fan tutte, Pamina in Die Zauberflöte, Zerlina in Don Giovanni, Wellgunde/Ortlinde in Der Ring des Nibelungen, Nedda in I Pagliacci, Micaela in Carmen, Gretel in Hänsel und Gretel and Anne Truelove in The Rake’s Progress. Her greatest successes, however, were as Mélisande in Pelléas et Mélisande (Decker/Ingo Metzmacher, 1999) and as Blanche in Dialogues des Carmelites (Lehnhoff/Ingo Metzmacher, 2003).
Guest performances have also taken this much-sought-after singer to other places - to the operas of Barcelona (Pamina, 2002), Toulouse (Melisande, 2003), Antwerp and Gent (Susanna, Despina, Zerlina), Brussels (Oscar), Strasbourg (Ännchen), Dresden (Sophie, Musetta), Munich (Marzelline, Zerlina), Frankfurt (Musetta), Leipzig (Susanna) and the Komische Oper in Berlin (Musetta, Gilda, Suor Angelika, Schwanhilde).
In addition to her work in the opera Gabriele Rossmanith has appeared in concerts and recitals. Numerous radio and television broadcasts complete her artistic repertoire. She has been on tours to South America, Japan, Canada and Israel. Several CD recordings of the soprano have also been published and, with Bernd Weikl, she was engaged by South German Television in Stuttgart for the film version of Hugo Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch and Gustav Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn. In 2011 she was awarded by the Hamburg Senate at the suggestion of opera director Simone Young, the honorary title of Hamburger Kammersängerin. |
