Barbara Hannigan

From Canada to Europe’s great opera houses, soprano Barbara Hannigan builds a fearless career defined by risk, precision and emotional intensity.

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Barbara Hannigan conducts the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France performing works by György Ligeti and Igor Stravinski.

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The Emerson String Quartet records their last album, Infinite voyage, in three days, after 47 years of music together. For this farewell, the string quartet invited soprano Barbara Hannigan to join them, and a film was born. Their precise, inhabited work, the moments of enthusiasm and fright, the research and the jokes, the evening meals and the morning confidences, the age limit of these men and the flamboyance of this woman nourishing each other, the admiring friendship full of irony and joyful rigor, the craft and yet the discovery, the humor as a cog towards concentration, the individual and the group… all this composes a portrait of the usually invisible making of music. Before everyone goes their own way.

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For 12 years now, Mathieu Amalric has been filming the stupendous New York saxophonist and composer John Zorn. Whirligig films that Zorn likes to programme during his concerts, like a musical set. They are screened here for the first time out of a concert setting. Music in the making, constellations of energies, an ever-expanding universe of sound…

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Part of a CD+DVD set released by Tzadik. Recorded at the powerful organ at Henry LeBoeuf Hall, Bozar in Brussels, this is one of Zorn’s most beautiful and personal solo performances—a dramatic musical reading of the epic Faust legend. Featuring a guest appearance by the sensational vocalist Barbara Hannigan, who is improvising with Zorn for the very first time. No one plays the organ quite like Zorn and many of his unusual techniques, usually hidden in performance, are presented in close focus. Beautifully filmed by state of the art equipment, this is a wild and colorful concert by two mavericks of new music.

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Opera confronts us with extremes of emotion, sometimes delivering unforgettable, life-changing experiences. Fuoro sacro (‘Sacred Fire’) seeks out singers who have the power to pierce our hearts, presenting three of them at work in the most intimate details of their rehearsals and preparations. Ermonela Jaho, Barbara Hannigan and Asmik Grigorian are watched closely as some of their secrets are revealed: how they inhabit their roles and transform words and notation on a page into that intangible but powerful magic being communicated to audiences from the opera stage. Over 90 minutes of extras are included featuring vocal warm-ups and live performances accompanied by pianists Evgenia Rubinova, Reinbert de Leeuw and Francesco Piemontesi.

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The Snow Queen is Hans Abrahamsen's first opera, composed to a self-penned libretto, based on Hans Christian Andersen's eponymous fairy tale. Following an in-depth study of the topic of snow and a life-long obsession with Andersen's fairy tales, Abrahamsen composed the opera between 2014 and 2018. Hans Abrahamsen's music, with it's smooth transitions and subtly modified repeats, lends the lyrics both depth and lightness. He is keen to point out the range of avenues for interpretation available. " It's possible to read the fairy tale in a variety of ways. It contains many mysteries which are open to numerous interpretations." Accompanying Barbara Hannigan is a top-class ensemble of singers, including Peter Rose, Katarinya Dalayman and Rachael Wilson. Cornelius Meister is the musical director, currently general music director at the Staatsoper Stuttgart.

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Alban Berg explores the power that Eros and Thanatos, in their rawest forms, have over our lives: Lulu, a femme fatale, will do anything to get ahead in a man’s world, but she ends up being destroyed.

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Canadian soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan conducts and sings with the French Radio Orchestra in a sensual programme celebrating the city of lights: gay Paris. Mezzo-soprano Julia Dawson, tenor Ziad Nehme and bass-baritone Douglas Williams also perform. Programme: Igor Stravinsky – Pulcinella Kurt Weill – Youkali Jacques Offenbach - La Gaîté parisienne

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Barbara Hannigan is a renowned soprano and exceptionally talented artist and musician from Canada, who recently has begun an international career as conductor. Making its North American premiere, Taking Risks shows Hannigan preparing to conduct her first opera, Stravinsky’s masterpiece The Rake’s Progress. From auditions to opening night, we follow the journey of a dedicated, passionate, and perceptive woman, taking a behind-the-scenes look at her creative process, with many moments of excitement and magic.

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Titus and Berenice love each other; under the watchful eye of Antiochus, the hopeless lover, they try yet refuse to understand each other. Taking up the “majestic sadness” of these alexandrines, among the greatest verses in the French language, Michael Jarrell amplifies the power of words, making them a vehicle for spaces and identities that, from Rome to Jerusalem, are unceasingly questioned.

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Brett Dean's multi-award-winning opera received its world premiere at Glyndebourne Festival 2017. The world premiere recording of Brett Deans new opera based on Shakespeares best-known tragedy: To be, or not to be. This is Hamlets dilemma, and the essence of Shakespeares most famous and arguably greatest work, given new life in operatic form in this original Glyndebourne commission. Thoughts of murder and revenge drive Hamlet when he learns that it was his uncle Claudius who killed his father, the King of Denmark, then seized his fathers crown and wife. But Hamlets vengeance vies with the question: is suicide a morally valid deed in an unbearably painful world?

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Running through Bartók’s disenchanted tale, whose haunting music was initially condemned as unplayable, and the expression of despair in Poulenc’s monologue, the director Krzysztof Warlikowski perceives a shared dramatic thread, a shared feminine consciousness and a shared sense of imprisonment and suffocation: for the woman who penetrates the confines of Bluebeard’s castle and Elle, the woman who clings to a telephone conversation with a man as the only thing worth living for, are condemned to share the same fate. And this man she speaks to, does he really exist? Unless the director has interpreted Cocteau’s words to the letter and the telephone has become a “terrifying weapon that leaves no trace, makes no noise”…

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Opera based on the story of Edward II and Piers Gaveston. Music by George Benjamin, libretto by Martin Crimp. BBC broadcast of the 2018 premiere at the Royal Opera House, the composer conducting, prefaced by commentary and interviews.

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In a poetic composition of song, narration, and images, this film follows Canadian soprano and orchestra conductor Barbara Hannigan, accompanied by the Ludwig Orchestra, as she records her album Crazy Girl Crazy. Why did she choose these three pieces, in essence so different, but which intimately resonate with her: Berio’s Sequenza III, Berg’s Lulu Suite, and Gershwin’s Girl Crazy? With this musical voyage peering into a world of precision and sharing, where a passionate woman brings forth a vocal tour de force, Mathieu Amalric, César winner for Best Actor in 2005 and 2008, shows us once more his talent behind the camera with this new opus that goes beyond a mere artist’s portrait.

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When a woman steps onto the conductor's podium, she is always one of the first: the first to lead a world-class orchestra, the first to conduct the closing night of London's Proms, the first to win the German Conductor Prize. It seems as though the world of orchestral conducting might finally be ready to change its attitudes toward female conductors.

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In “C’est presque au bout du monde”, I explore a mystery which fascinates me : where do these inhuman voices come from ? Where in the body is the source of this unsettling anomaly of singing ? - Mathieu Amalric

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From the Auditorium Parco della Musica – Sala Santa Cecilia, Antonio Pappano conducts the Orchestra and Choir of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. Sciarrino: ‘La nuova Euridice secondo Rilke’ – Bach: ‘Magnificat’. Sopranos Barbara Hannigan and Amanda Forsythe.

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The film follows Canadian singer, conductor and actress Barbara Hannigan backstage in an attempt to reveal the secret behind this wild, fearless and remarkably versatile woman.

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Alone in a secluded mansion, Giacomo Casanova cries out then collapses. When the mysterious and beautiful writer, Elisa von der Recke, comes to visit, it breathes new life into the old man. A movie that captures the myth of the greatest seducer of all times, Casanova, his story is told both through fiction and on-stage opera performances that unravel the tale of his adventures, his passions, and ultimately his fear of death.

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The audience in the upper crust concert venue KKL at the Lucerne Festival must have felt bemused: after singing classical Mozart arias, blonde soprano Barbara Hannigan returns to the stage in a dominatrix costume, black wig and PVC boots and proceeds to sing and conduct György Ligeti’s "Mysteries of the Macabre". The audience celebrates Barbara Hannigan’s disturbing performance with standing ovations. Critics are struggling to describe her captivating impact. Barbara Seiler‘s film "I’m a creative animal" follows her backstage in an attempt to reveal the secret behind this wild, fearless and remarkably versatile woman.

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When Written on Skin had its premiere at the 2012 Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, conducted by George Benjamin himself, it received a standing ovation. The opera's arrival at Covent Garden in 2013 was eagerly anticipated, and provided audiences with the opportunity to experience the work of two of Britain's greatest living artists. Benjamin previously collaborated with playwright Martin Crimp on Into the Little Hill, a magical retelling of the Pied Piper fairytale, and for this new work they joined forces with acclaimed stage director Katie Mitchell. For all three, the production marked their main-stage debut at the Royal Opera House. The tale, inspired by a medieval legend, tells of an ill-fated troubadour, drawn into a liaison with an innocent maiden. But they are observed by the jealous eye of her protector, who wreaks a shocking revenge on the young couple. Written on Skin draws on a 12th-century Occitan legend about the troubadour Guillaume de Cabestanh.

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Premiered in Stockholm in 1978, the work is based on a play by Michel de Ghelderode (1898-1962) and unfolds in an imaginary land inspired by the famous Dutch painter Pieter Brueghel the Elder: Nekrotzar, the Grand Macabre, announces the end of the world; but in a land ruled by eros, alcohol and corruption, his plan to unleash the Apocalypse bursts like a soap bubble. LIVE RECORDING FROM THE GRAN TEATRE DEL LICEU, BARCELONA, 2011

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The chamber opera One represents a new kind of music multimedia drama. Michel van der Aa's poetic production of technological virtuosity fuses libretto, video, live music and soundtrack with the soprano voice and stage presence of Barbara Hannigan into One. Projected images and electronic sounds add emphasis to the onstage performance of the protagonist, while the recorded and live voice interact with incredible synchronicity.

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An irreverent and hilarious spin on opera, domestic drama and the hallowed institutions of love and marriage, Burnt Toast is an hour-long television opera comprised of a series of eight comic operas each depicting a different stage of romantic love. The relationships depicted run the gamut: from the passionate to the fantasized, the bored and of course the dead relationship, each as recognizable as the last.

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A humourous "domestic opera" about an upwardly mobile couple in their mid thirties who can't resolve an argument about the cap being left off the toothpaste.

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