Mihoko Fujimura

Soprano Mihoko Fujimura is one of Japan's major opera stars, and is among the very few to specialize in the music of Wagner and other composers of the late 19th century, and she has had an extensive career in the West as well as in East Asia. She has often appeared in concerts of choral music and orchestral song. Mihoko Fujimura, also known as Miko Fujimura, was born in 1966 in Japan's Gifu Prefecture. She studied at the National University for Fine Arts and Music (Tōkyō Geijutsu Daigaku) in Tokyo and went on for further study at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich, Germany. The year 2002 marked a breakthrough in Fujimura's career as she appeared at the Munich Opera Festival and made her formal opera house debut in the very citadel of Wagnerian tradition, the Bayreuth Festival. She sang the role of Fricka in productions of Wagner's Das Rheingold and Die Walküre. Well-received, she returned to Bayreuth for nine years running in a variety of other Wagnerian roles, not only in the Ring cycle of operas but as Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde and as Kundry in Parsifal. By the early 2010s, her international renown was secure; she has appeared at many of Europe's major houses, including the Staatsoper in Vienna; the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in London; and La Scala in Milan. Her repertoire includes not only German opera but also the title roles in Bizet's Carmen and Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande. Fujimura has also appeared widely in choral and orchestral song repertoire, with a long list of credits including concerts with the Wiener Philharmoniker, the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, and the Berliner Philharmoniker; she holds a position as permanent guest artist with several major orchestras. Her concert repertoire includes Verdi's Requiem, several large works by Mahler, and Schoenberg's Gürre-Lieder. Her large catalog of recordings includes a reading of the latter work with the Sinfonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks under Mariss Jansons. Comparatively few of her appearances and recordings have been in her native Japan, but in 2019 her recording of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, with the Mito Chamber Orchestra under conductor Seiji Ozawa, was released. Fujimura received the Japanese government's Purple Ribbon Medal of Honor in 2014.
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