Anne Evans

Anne Evans, established as one of Britain’s most internationally successful singers, has appeared in opera and concert throughout the world.

> Read interview with Anne Evans here

She sang Brünnhilde at the Bayreuth Festival with Daniel Barenboim from 1989 to 1992. These performances are available on CD and DVD. She also sang this role to great critical acclaim in Berlin, Vienna, Paris, Covent Garden, Buenos Aires, Nice, Welsh National Opera, in concert with the Cleveland Orchestra and Christoph von Dohnanyi, and in semi-staged performances at the Royal Albert Hall in London with Bernard Haitink.

Anne Evans, a celebrated Isolde, sang the role in Berlin, Paris, Dresden, Brussels, for Welsh National Opera and Scottish Opera, and at the Ravello Festival. Her performances of Leonore (Fidelio) included the Metropolitan Opera New York, the Edinburgh Festival, and Stuttgart, and other notable engagements have included Sieglinde (San Francisco), Elisabeth in Tannhäuser at the Metropolitan New York, the Marschallin (Der Rosenkavalier) in a new production for English National Opera, Ariadne at the Edinburgh Festival, The Turn of the Screw at La Monnaie in Brussels (released on CD), and Les Dialogues de Carmelites at Glimmerglass.

In the concert hall she has sung with many of the world’s leading conductors and has given recitals at the Wigmore Hall and the Edinburgh Festival. In August 2003 she sang excerpts from Der Rosenkavalier with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sir Charles Mackerras at the BBC Proms in what was to be her farewell public appearance.

Anne Evans was made a Dame of the British Empire in June 2000.

> Read Wagneropera.net's interview with Anne Evans here

Anne Evans on Wikipedia

Singing Isolde

"You have to work yourself up into a lather at the start. But other times it's like flying. It's my favourite Wagner role, but you have to know what you're doing. You can blast yourself into bits in the first act and have nothing left for the third. It's very varied. It's like owning a huge chest of drawers and opening the one you need at each different stage."
Anne Evans (The Guardian)

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One of the finest monuments in sound ever to have been raised to the everlasting glory of music. (Claude Debussy on Parsifal)

"The thing about Wagner is that there can be no true success in any production of his operas, only degrees of failure. There is so much in these bloody pieces, all you can do is try to live up to them." (Keith Warner, The Guardian)

"I have never come across an audience with so much hatred, so much anger, such a thirst for revenge. They take everything personally. It makes you a little bit scared, and it's really quite terrifying." (Lance Ryan on the audiences at Bayreuth)

"People sometimes complain that Wagner operas are too long, that they get stiff and sore about 10.30 because they have rushed in to hear one of his works straight from work and are not properly prepared for listening to his music. The audience, as much as the artists, must be prepared for a performance."
(Benjamin Britten to Alan Blyth, Gramophone)

"I was bowled over. It was the year after Wieland Wagner had died; to be able to see his productions was a total knock-out. These bare stagings, where everything was done with lighting. The light changed with the music, and the shadows and patterns seemed as archetypal as the music itself. Nobody had done that on the stage before. I thought it was extraordinary and wonderful."
(Patrick Carnegy to The Guardian)

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