“Soprano of the century”, the “Stradivari of voices” - attributes assigned to the young artist by enthusiastic critics, colleagues and fans of Anja Harteros. The artist herself said in an interview about her approach to the roles she plays: “To express truth in music, the soul and one’s own feelings must be involved.”

It is the symbiosis of intense stage presence, perfect voice control and musical sensitivity that marks her out, both in opera performances and in lieder recitals and concerts, as a truly great artist.

Her international career began when she won the 1999 Cardiff Singer of the World competition and before long the artist was being invited to all the world’s major opera houses: the Metropolitan Opera in New York, La Scalain Milan, London’s Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the State Opera in Munich, Vienna, Berlin, Hamburg and Dresden, and the opera houses of Florence, Amsterdam, Paris, Geneva, Tokyo and many more, plus the SalzburgFestival.

Anja Harteros works with such celebrated conductors as Daniel Barenboim, Ivor Bolton, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Marek Janowski, Mariss Jansons, James Levine, Fabio Luisi, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Kent Nagano, Sir Roger Norrington, Antonio Pappano and Christian Thielemann.

Her extensive operatic repertoire embraces such leading roles as Mimì (LaBohème), Elisabetta (Don Carlos), Desdemona (Otello), Amelia (Simon Boccanegra), Alice Ford (Falstaff), Micaëla (Carmen), Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte), Contessa (Le nozze di Figaro), Donna Anna (Don Giovanni), Elettra (Idomeneo), Agathe (Der Freischütz), Eva (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg), Elisabeth (Tannhäuser), Elsa (Lohengrin) and the title roles in Alcina, Arabella and La Traviata.

She has given numerous lieder recitals, and audiences have been delighted by her interpretation of concert arias by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven with the Munich Philharmonic, the Radio Symphony Orchestra (RSO) of Berlin and L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. Highlights of her career to date have included Beethoven’s Missa solemnis with the Bavarian State Orchestra, Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs with the Bavarian RSO, Dvorák’s Requiem with the Berlin Philharmonic and above all the Missa da Requiem by Giuseppe Verdi with the orchestras of La Scala in Milan and Santa Cecilia in Rome and the State Orchestras of Dresden and Berlin. She was joined by the Boston Symphony Orchestra when she sang the American first performance of Arvo Pärt’s Como anhela la cierva.

In recognition of her outstanding artistic achievements, she was awarded the honorific title of Kammersängerin in Bavaria in July 2007.

Her CD and DVD releases include La Traviata and Alcina, Idomeneo, Mozart arias and Strauss’s Four Last Songs.