Elīna Garanča (born 16 September 1976) is a Latvian mezzo-soprano. She began to study singing in her hometown of Riga in 1996 and continued her studies in Vienna and in the United States. By 1999 she had won first place in the Mirjam Helin Singing Competition in Helsinki and had begun a career in Europe. Worldwide engagements followed her 2003 Salzburg Festival appearances.
She entered the Latvian Academy of Music in 1996 to study singing with Sergej Martinov. She continued her studies in Vienna with Irina Gavrilovich and in the United States with Virginia Zeani. Garanča began her professional career at the Meiningen Court Theatre, Meiningen, Germany in 1998,[6] and later worked at the Frankfurt Opera. In 1999, she won the Mirjam Helin Singing Competition in Helsinki, Finland.[7]
Garanča's international breakthrough came in 2003 at the Salzburg Festival when she sang Annio in a production of Mozart's La clemenza di Tito, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Major engagements followed quickly, such as Charlotte in Werther, Dorabella in Così fan tutte at the Vienna State Opera (2004) and Dorabella in a Paris production directed by Patrice Chéreau (2005). In 2006, she returned to La clemenza di Tito, this time singing the part of Sesto. On 12 January 2008 Garanča made her company and house debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, in the role of Rosina in Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia.[8] Of her debut, Bernard Holland wrote in The New York Times: "Ms. Garanca is the real thing ... Modern singing techniques adapt with difficulty to Rossini's early-19th-century emphasis on speed, lightness and athletic articulation, and Ms. Garanca was the only one onstage sounding completely comfortable. The lyric passages sang out; the episodes of racecourse delivery were fully in hand".[9] Garanča sang the leading role of Georges Bizet's Carmen in the 2010 and 2015 productions of the Metropolitan Opera. In the opening concert of the 2011 Rheingau Musik Festival in the Eberbach Abbey she performed Alban Berg's Sieben frühe Lieder with the hr-Sinfonieorchester, conducted by Paavo Järvi.[10]
Garanča is married to the conductor Karel Mark Chichon, and they have two daughters.[13] She is fluent in Latvian, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Italian, and English.
Awards and honours
1999: First Place: Mirjam Helin International Singing Competition (Finland)[14]
^"Elina Garanca". Wiener Staatsoper. Archived from the original on 8 June 2016. Retrieved 8 June 2016.
^Christiansen, Rupert (26 September 2012). "Elina Garanca: We mezzos get to have such fun". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 8 June 2016. Retrieved 8 June 2016. Christiansen states "on the showing she makes in her new album, Romantique, I would go further and claim that in her repertory, there has been no one to touch her since the Olga Borodina of 20 years ago."
Bibliography
Wirklich wichtig sind die Schuhe ("The shoes are really important"), Ecowin Verlag GmbH 2013, ISBN978-3711000453; Garanča's first autobiography.
Zwischen den Welten: Mein Weg auf die großen Opernbühnen (Between the Worlds: My way to the great opera stages), Ecowin Verlag GmbH 2019, ISBN978-3711002334; Garanča's second autobiography.
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