Download Rosemary Hardy soprano Rosemary Hardy, actor and singer, is

Rosemary Hardy
soprano
Rosemary Hardy, actor and singer, is particularly known both as a singer of contemporary
music and as a member of the “family” of actors surrounding the highly acclaimed Swiss
theatre director, Christoph Marthaler. Her performances with him have included “The
Unanswered Question” and “20th Century Blues”, both at the Basel Theatre. “Die Schone
Mullerin”, for the Zurich City Theatre was performed over 70 times all over Europe, as were
“Winch Only” (for the Kunstenfestival in Brussels), “Maeterlinck” (originally for the
National Theatres of Ghent and Amsterdam) and “Schutz vor der Zukunft“, a project for the
Vienna Festival based on the Nazi atrocities at the famous psychiatric hospital, Baumgartner
Hohe in Vienna. This piece will be performed again in the 2010 Avignon Festival, where
Rosemary Hardy will also take part in a new production for the festival directed by Christoph
Marthaler. Her next project will be “Wozuwozuwozu”, a play based on Nobel Prize winner
Heinrich Boell’s novel, “Billiards at Half Past Nine”, directed by Anna Viebrock at the
Cologne City Theatre, Germany.
Her singing career has been long and varied, ranging from early music to pioneering new
works of our own time. She was deeply involved in the Early Music revival of the 70’s,
working with musicians such as Sir Roger Norrington, with whom she made her opera debut
as La Musica in Monteverdi’s “Orfeo”, directed by Jonathan Miller. She performed and
recorded works by Purcell and Handel with Sir John Eliot Gardiner and David Munrow, as
well as performing all over the world with Alfred Deller and the Deller Consort.
Rosemary Hardy has first and foremost become known for her performances of 20th Century
music, being particularly associated with composers such as Oliver Knussen and Gyorgy
Kurtag. She was “Max” in Oliver Knussen’s “Where the Wild Things Are” at the National
Theatre, London and at Glyndebourne Opera. She also recorded this role and that of “Rhoda”
in “Higglety Pigglety Pop!”, the companion piece to “Where the Wild Things Are”.
She is one of very few exponents of Gyorgy Kurtag’s “The Messages of the late
R.V.Troussova”, which she recorded with the Ensemble Modern under Peter Eotvos, and
Kurtag’s virtuoso “ The Sayings of Peter Bornemisza”, a “concerto” for voice and piano
which she performed many times together with the great French pianist, Pierre Laurent
Aimard, notably at the Paris Autumn Festival. She was chosen by Gyorgy Ligeti to record for
Sony his early songs in Hungarian. Her recording of “Troussova” was awarded the Deutsche
Schallplatten Prize and the Edison Prize, whilst the Ligeti recording was nominated for a
Grammy.
She has enjoyed a 20 year association with Reinbert de Leeuw and the Schoenberg Ensemble,
Amsterdam, with whom she has toured extensively both in Europe and the USA in works by
composers such as Zemlinsky and Szymanowsky up to distinguished composers of the
Netherlands Ton de Leeuw and Klaas de Fries.
Among the great works of the 20th Century Rosemary Hardy has performed can be included
“Erwartung” by Arnold Schoenberg, which she sang with the Cleveland Orchestra under
Christoph von Dohnanyi and with the Stockholm Philharmonic and Gothenburg Symphony
Orchestras under Sir Andrew Davis, and the great Messiaen song cycle, “Poemes pour Mi”,
with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sir Andrew Davis in Westminster Cathedral, and
subsequently with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra under Daniel Harding, BBC Scottish
Symphony Orchestra under Ilan Volkov, and the BBC Philharmonic under Reinbert de
Leeuw. Rosemary Hardy has been associated with a wide range of composers from our time,
from Xenakis to Birtwistle, Nicola Lefanu to Jonathan Harvey, Pierre Boulez to Wolfgang
Rihm. This commitment continues unabated, most recently in a performance in November
2009 at the Zurich New Music Days of Milton Babbitt’s “Philomel”, for soprano and
electronics, and the first performance on November 28th, 2009 of “Wenn Du mich horst,
klopf zweimal” for soprano and string quartet, by the young Turkish composer, Zeynep
Gedizlioglu, commissioned and performed by the Xenia Ensemble at Festival Estovest in
Turin, Italy.
Rosemary Hardy is a linguist, having lived and worked not only in her native UK, but also in
Hungary, Sweden, France, Switzerland, Germany and Turkey. She is also known as an
experienced teacher, from courses at the Britten Pears School in Aldeburgh, England, the
Crescendo Summer Institute for the Arts in Hungary, as well as numerous projects in Sweden.