Anja Silja

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Anja Silja 1968
Anja Silja 1968
Anja Silja on the cover of her autobiography
Anja Silja on the cover of her autobiography

Anja Silja, born April 17, 1940 in Berlin, is a German soprano. There has been some controversy as to her exact birth year, with past reports indicating 1935, but she has insisted that the proper year is 1940.[1]

Anja Silja began her operatic career at a very early age, with her grandfather Egon van Rijn as her voice teacher1. She sang Rosina in Rossini's Barbiere di Siviglia at the Berlin Städtische Oper in 1956. Her worldwide career took up when she sang the Queen of the Night in Mozart's Magic Flute at the 1959 Aix-en-Provence Festival. She had an affair with Wieland Wagner, who left his family for her and made her one of his New Bayreuth stalwarts from 1960 to Wieland's death in 1966.[2] By then, she was already romantically involved with French conductor André Cluytens, himself a married man to whom she had been introduced by Wieland. After Cluytens died in 1967, she subsequently began a relationship with the German conductor Christoph von Dohnányi. They eventually married in 1980[3] and had three children. Her opera career slowed down during the tenure of Dohnányi with The Cleveland Orchestra, but she resumed her career after several years. Their marriage ended in divorce in the 1990s.

Among her many roles are Salome and Herodias in Strauss's Salome, Elektra in his Elektra, Isolde in Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, Senta in his Flying Dutchman, Elisabeth and Venus in his Tannhäuser, Elsa and Ortrud in his Lohengrin, Freia, Sieglinde and Brünnhilde in his Ring cycle, Mère Marie and Madame de Croissy (her La Scala debut role) in Francis Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites, Marie in Alban Berg's Wozzeck, Lulu and Gräfin Geschwitz in his Lulu, Kostelnička in Leoš Janáček's Jenůfa, Emilia Marty in his Věc Makropulos, Leonore in Beethoven's Fidelio (her Metropolitan Opera debut), Desdemona in Verdi's Otello, Prince Orlovsky in Johann Strauss II's Die Fledermaus and Hanna Glawari in Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow.

In 1999, Silja's autobiography, Die Sehnsucht nach dem Unerreichbaren, was published by Parthas Verlag Berlin (ISBN 3-932529-29-4). She lives in Paris, having purchased the home where Cluytens formerly resided.

Contents

[edit] Commercial Discography


[edit] Commercial Videography

  • Leoš Janáček
    • Jenůfa (R.Alexander; A.Davis, Lehnhoff, 1989) [live]
    • The Makropulos Affair (Tear; A.Davis, Lehnhoff, 1995) [live]
  • Richard Strauss
    • Salome (Malfitano, Terfel; Dohnányi, Bondy, 1997) [live]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Anthony Tommasini, "Bayreuth Star Goes on to Ovations in Her 60s". New York Times, 13 February 2007.
  2. ^ Tim Ashley, 'If you've really loved once then life is over'. The Guardian, 22 June 2001.
  3. ^ Michael White, "A femme fatale faces the music". Telegraph, 27 September 2001.

[edit] Bibliography

  • Anja Silja, by Josef Heinzelmann, Rembrandt Verlag, 1965.
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