Agnes Baltsa

With a voice of unmistakable power and brilliance, Greek mezzo-soprano Agnes Baltsa has had a career at the very top of the operatic world, taking her all the way from Mozart's impetuous teenager Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro to Strauss's cruel, calculating Herodias in Salome. She is a consummate performer, one whose direct engagement with both the music and the audience has always been palpable. Born on the Ionian island of Lefkada in 1944, Baltsa grew up in a musically inclined family, first experiencing opera from radio broadcasts and films of the day. She started to learn to sing and play the piano at an early age, before her family's move to Athens, when she was 13, allowed her to study at the city's conservatory. After she graduated, a Maria Callas scholarship took her to Munich with the goal of a career in opera, and she continued her vocal studies privately while also reading German at university. She joined the Oper Frankfurt company in 1968, making her debut that year as Cherubino, and within two years had made a guest appearance at the Wiener Staatsoper as Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier, becoming the youngest singer to play the role there. Initially establishing her career in Germany and Austria, Baltsa soon became a star of the international opera world, and a favourite singer of legendary conductor Herbert von Karajan, who described her as "the most important dramatic mezzo of our day", and went on to cast her in important productions at the Salzburg Festival. The special nature of Baltsa's sound – full and forward in the lower register, with a potent, fiery chest voice and a radiant top – combined with perfect musicality and stunning vocal agility meant that she could encompass a whole host of roles, from Rossini's fearless comic heroines to Verdi's thwarted princesses, with rare commitment and glamour. Her powerfully seductive and tragic Carmen was a signature role, and her recording of the opera under Karajan with regular partner José Carreras remains a classic. Later roles include Wagner's Kundry in Parsifal and the Kostelnička in Janáček's Jenůfa, and in 2017, she scored a triumph as Klytämnestra in the production of Strauss's Elektra with which Greek National Opera inaugurated its first season at the newly built Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center.