Ann Murray, DBE (born 27 August 1949) is an Irish mezzo-soprano. [1]
Murray was born in Dublin. Having won a number of prizes at the Feis Ceoil, she studied singing at the College of Music (now the DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama, Dublin) with Nancy Calthorpe, as well as arts and music at University College Dublin. In 1968, she made her Irish opera debut performing the shepherd role in a concert performance of Tosca . [2] She pursued further studies with Frederic Cox at the Royal Manchester College of Music and made her stage debut as Alcestis in Christoph Willibald Gluck's Alceste in 1974. She has since sung at all major opera houses and is particularly noted for her performances in works by George Frideric Handel, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Richard Strauss.[ citation needed ]
Murray performs mainly at Covent Garden (where she performed as Siphare in Mozart's Mitridate, re di Ponto ), the English National Opera and the Bavarian State Opera. Murray was the featured singer in volume three of the Hyperion Schubert Edition, Hyperion Records' complete Franz Schubert lieder project, in 1988, led by pianist Graham Johnson.[ citation needed ]
She maintains her links with Ireland and was a patron of the Young Associate Artists Programme of Dublin's Opera Theatre Company.[ citation needed ] In September 2010, she was appointed professor of singing at the Royal Academy of Music in London, [3] where she was previously (since 1999) an honorary fellow. [4]
She received an honorary doctorate in music from the National University of Ireland in 1997. [4] She was made Bavarian Kammersängerin in 1998.
In 2002, she was made an Honorary Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the Diamond Jubilee Honours for her services to music. [5]
She was awarded the Bavarian Order of Merit in 2004. [4]
Murray was married to the late English tenor, Philip Langridge. The couple had one son, Jonathan, also a tenor. [6]
Ileana Cotrubaș is a Romanian operatic soprano whose career spanned from the 1960s to the 1980s. She was much admired for her acting skills and facility for singing opera in many different languages.
Roméo et Juliette is a symphonie dramatique, a large-scale choral symphony by French composer Hector Berlioz, which was first performed on 24 November 1839. The libretto was written by Émile Deschamps, and the completed work was assigned the catalogue numbers Op. 17 and H. 79. It is based on Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet; it is regarded as one of Berlioz's finest works, and it is among the most original in form. The score is Berlioz's most comprehensive and detailed programmatic piece.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau was a German lyric baritone and conductor of classical music, one of the most famous Lieder performers of the post-war period, best known as a singer of Franz Schubert's Lieder, particularly "Winterreise" of which his recordings with accompanists Gerald Moore and Jörg Demus are still critically acclaimed half a century after their release.
The Gramophone Classical Music Awards, launched in 1977, are one of the most significant honours bestowed on recordings in the classical record industry. They are often viewed as equivalent to or surpassing the American Grammy award, and referred to as the Oscars for classical music. They are widely regarded as the most influential and prestigious classical music awards in the world. According to Matthew Owen, national sales manager for Harmonia Mundi USA, "ultimately it is the classical award, especially worldwide."
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Susan Gritton is an English operatic soprano. She was the 1994 winner of the Kathleen Ferrier Award and has sung leading roles in a wide-ranging repertoire from Handel and Mozart to Britten, Janáček and Strauss.
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List of recordings of Johannes Brahms' A German Requiem, Op. 45 (1868).
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