AnnaTomowa-Sintow is appointed honorary member of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden on her 80th birthday!
She is one of the great singers of the past decades. She has achieved an outstanding international career, but the Staatsoper Unter den Linden has always been a fixed point and a piece of home.
Anna Tomowa-Sintow, born 80 years ago in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria, achieved worldwide fame as an opera and concert singer; her silvery, expressive, and versatile voice was just as impressive as her stage presence and temperament. The fact that Anna Tomowa-Sintow was awarded the title of “Kammersängerin” twice, at the Vienna State Opera and at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, also speaks for the high level of appreciation.
Her 80th birthday on September 22, 2021 was the reason to make her an honorary member of the house where she became a world star and to which she has been closely associated for decades.
As the daughter of an opera choir singer, she performed in the theater as a child. After her vocal training at the Conservatory in Sofia, she made her debut in her hometown in 1965 as Tatjana in Tchaikovsky's EUGENE ONEGIN. In 1967, she came to the Leipzig Opera House, but then moved to Berlin in 1972, to the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. There, she sang numerous large lyrical and dramatic soprano roles, especially in operas by Mozart, Wagner, Verdi, Puccini, and Strauss, and also Slavic repertoire. These include Fiordiligi, Donna Anna and Contessa, Elsa and Elisabeth, Desdemona and Aida, as well as Ariadne, Arabella and Marschallin - and much more! She quickly became a crowd favorite, and she returned to the Berlin Staatsoper often and with pleasure in later years. In 2013, she performed as Saburowa in Daniel Barenboim's new production of Rimsky-Korsakov's THE CZAR’S BRIDE at the Schiller Theater, where her vocal freshness and playful liveliness make her colleagues on stage and the audience in the hall. In 2017, at the reopening of the completely refurbished Unter den Linden opera house, she spoke about the appropriation of Goethe's FAUST as a prelude to the music theater evening: “Zum Augenblicke sagen: Verweile doch!” with Schumann's FAUST SCENES.
With the start of her Berlin engagement, Anna Tomowa-Sintow began to work as a guest around the world. In 1973, she began to collaborate with Herbert von Karajan, who engaged the young singer for the world premiere of Orff's DE TEMPORUM FINE COMOEDIA at the Salzburg Festival. She sang in Mozart’s city for the 19th festival summer in operas and concerts. She has performed with the most prominent orchestras and conductors, and has left her artistic mark on all major centers of classical music, including the Vienna State Opera, the Teatro alla Scala and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. In addition to Herbert von Karajan, who was particularly influential as a mentor, she sang in performances led by artists such as Carlos Kleiber, Karl Böhm, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Colin Davis, Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Muti, Zubin Mehta, and Daniel Barenboim. Her stage partners included all the greats of the opera world, including the "Three Tenors" Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and José Carreras. Numerous excellent sound recordings document the singular vocal and creative abilities of Anna Tomowa-Sintow; one only hears once the floating, light, and yet highly expressive, sensitively balanced recording of Richard Strauss' "Four Last Songs" with her and Herbert von Karajan.