Anne Schwanewilms
Soprano Anne Schwanewilms emerged in the late 1990s as a promising young singer in dramatic roles. She has sung major Wagner parts and has become known as an important interpreter of the music of Richard Strauss, both operas and lieder.
Schwanewilms was born in 1967 in Gelsenkirchen in West Germany's Ruhr region. She considered a career as a florist but then started voice lessons with the operatic bass Hans Sotin and others at the Musikhochschule Köln. After finishing her studies, she was a member of the Cologne Opera Studio from 1990 to 1992, then joined the permanent cast of the Cologne Opera, remaining there until 1996. At that point, she was a mezzo-soprano, but she changed direction, learning soprano repertory and even canceling already-booked commitments. Launching herself as a freelancer, Schwanewilms quickly found roles; she was invited to the Bayreuth Festival in 1996 to appear as one of the Valkyries in Wagner's Die Walküre and in the second female lead of Gutrune in Götterdämmerung.
Schwanewilms was invited back several times to Bayreuth and appeared at the Salzburg Festival as well, and her name spread through other houses. She appeared at major houses around Germany, continental Europe, Britain, and Japan. Schwanewilms appeared on several operatic recordings in the late 1990s and made her solo debut on the Somm label in 2000 in the cantata Around the Curve of the World by Francis Grier. In 2005, she was heard with the Hallé Orchestra in Strauss lieder, and she later joined Vignoles on the Hyperion label's series of Strauss songs, and with the Gürzenich Orchestra of Cologne in Strauss' Four Last Songs.
Her debut at New York's Metropolitan Opera came in 2013 as the Kaiserin in Richard Strauss' Die Frau ohne Schatten. By that time, she had added major Strauss operatic roles to her repertory, including Ariadne in Ariadne auf Naxos, the Feldmarschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, and Danae in Die Liebe der Danae. She also sings major Italian roles, including Desdemona in Verdi's Otello. Schwanewilms is regarded as a major Strauss specialist, and she is an enthusiastic interpreter of lieder by Strauss and others, working with top-notch accompanists such as Malcolm Martineau, Roger Vignoles, and Charles Spencer. Schwanewilms joined the faculty of the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt in Weimar in 2018. In 2021, by which time her recording catalog included more than 30 albums, she appeared on a London Philharmonic recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 8 ("Symphony of a Thousand") conducted by Vladimir Jurowski.
© James Manheim /TiVo
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Discography
12 album(s) • Sorted by Bestseller
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Strauss, R.: Elektra (Live At Philharmonie, Berlin / 2014)
Evelyn Herlitzius, Anne Schwanewilms, Waltraud Meier, René Pape, Staatskapelle Dresden, Christian Thielemann
Classical - Released by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) on 1 Jan 2014
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner: Wesendonck Lieder - Tannhäuser - Tristan und Isolde
Anne Schwanewilms, Radio Symphonieorchester Wien, Cornelius Meister
Vocal Music (Secular and Sacred) - Released by Capriccio on 3 Feb 2014
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
Strauss: Vier letzte Lieder & Opera Scenes
Anne Schwanewilms, Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, Jutta Bohnert, Markus Stenz, Regina Richter
Opera - Released by Orfeo on 18 May 2012
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Robert Schumann - Hugo Wolf : Lieder
Anne Schwanewilms, Manuel Lange
Vocal Music (Secular and Sacred) - Released by CapriccioNR on 30 Jul 2013
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
Mendelssohn: Lobgesang, Op.52
Classical - Released by Decca Music Group Ltd. on 1 Jan 2005
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Kindertotenlieder, Rückert Lieder & Schoenberg: 4 Lieder, Op. 2
Anne Schwanewilms, Malcolm Martineau
Vocal Music (Secular and Sacred) - Released by Onyx Classics on 4 May 2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Schöne Welt…
Anne Schwanewilms, Charles Spencer
Classical - Released by CapriccioNR on 6 May 2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Doderer: Symphony No. 2, DWV 93 "Bohinj" & Violin Concerto No. 2, DWV 62b "In Breath of Time"
Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, Anne Schwanewilms, Yury Revich, Ariane Matiakh
Classical - Released by CapriccioNR on 6 Nov 2015
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
Strauss, R.: Elektra (Live At Philharmonie, Berlin / 2014)
Evelyn Herlitzius, Anne Schwanewilms, Waltraud Meier, René Pape, Staatskapelle Dresden, Christian Thielemann
Classical - Released by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) on 1 Jan 2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Poèmes pour Mi
Anne Schwanewilms, Orchestre National De Lyon, Jun Märkl
Classical - Released by Naxos on 28 Sep 2009
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Liszt & Mahler: Das Himmlische Leben
Anne Schwanewilms, Charles Spencer
Classical - Released by Onyx Classics on 10 Sep 2012
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
R. Strauss: Complete Songs, Vol. 2
Anne Schwanewilms, Roger Vignoles
Classical - Released by Hyperion on 1 May 2007
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo