Magdalena Ko?ená

捷克出生的次女高音歌唱家瑪格德萊娜·考杰娜是近年來(lái)活躍于樂(lè)壇的一顆紅星，學(xué)生時(shí)代她便贏得了捷克國(guó)家古典音樂(lè)大賽和第六屆莫扎特國(guó)際聲樂(lè)比賽冠軍，后曾在布爾諾歌劇院和維也納國(guó)家歌劇院參加演出。1998年秋季起，她開(kāi)始有計(jì)劃地舉行一系列獨(dú)唱音樂(lè)會(huì)。她與DG唱片公司的“結(jié)緣”也純屬偶然。一次唱片公司的主管在審聽(tīng)捷克巴洛克合唱團(tuán)錄音時(shí)，被在其中擔(dān)任獨(dú)唱的考杰娜的優(yōu)美嗓音迷住了，立即找到她，在進(jìn)一步的試聽(tīng)之后，與她簽下錄音合約，陸續(xù)為她推出了多張唱片。那之后，她的表現(xiàn)不負(fù)眾望，先后兩次捧回權(quán)威的《留聲機(jī)〕吠獎(jiǎng)和“格萊美”獎(jiǎng)，使自己得到更多關(guān)注。這幾年間，她又因與指揮家拉特爾的戀情而成為公眾的焦點(diǎn)。巴洛克時(shí)期的聲樂(lè)作品一向?yàn)榭冀苣人姁?ài)。
 
Magdalena Ko?ená’s international career was securely established during her mid-twenties. The Czech mezzo-soprano, who won critical plaudits for her profound musicianship and beguiling artistry at an early age, signed an exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon in 1999. Ko?ená has since matured to become one of the foremost singers of her generation, a great communicator able to hold song recital, concert hall and opera audiences spellbound. Her insightful interpretations arise from a profound feeling for words and their meaning and total immersion in each work in her wide-ranging repertoire.
 
Magdalena Ko?ená was born in the Czech city of Brno on 26 May 1973. She sang with Kantiléna, the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra’s youth choir, and progressed to study voice and piano at the Brno Conservatory. In 1991 Ko?ená enrolled at Bratislava’s Academy of Performing Arts to study singing with Eva Bláhová. She made her breakthrough as winner of the Sixth International Mozart Competition in Salzburg in 1995, joined the Vienna Volksoper ensemble the following year, and launched significant creative partnerships with the pianist Graham Johnson and conductor Marc Minkowski in 1998. She was signed by Deutsche Grammophon in 1999 and immediately released her first album of Bach arias on its Archiv label. Her recital debut recording with Graham Johnson, an album of songs by Dvo?ák, Janá?ek and Martin?, appeared on Deutsche Grammophon’s yellow label in 2001 and was honoured with Gramophone’s Solo Vocal Award.
 
Ko?ená has worked with many of the world’s leading conductors, Claudio Abbado, Pierre Boulez, Gustavo Dudamel, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Bernard Haitink, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Mariss Jansons, James Levine, Sir Charles Mackerras, Sir Roger Norrington and Sir Simon Rattle among them. Her list of distinguished recital partners includes the pianists Daniel Barenboim, Yefim Bronfman, Malcolm Martineau, András Schiff and Mitsuko Uchida, with whom she has performed at such prestigious venues as Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Alice Tully Hall and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and at the Aldeburgh, Edinburgh and Salzburg festivals. Ko?ená’s understanding of historical performance practices have been cultivated in collaboration with outstanding period-instrument ensembles, including the English Baroque Soloists, the Gabrieli Consort and Players, Il Giardino Armonico, Les Musiciens du Louvre, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Venice Baroque Orchestra. She is also in demand as soloist with the Berlin, Vienna and Czech Philharmonics and the Cleveland, Philadelphia and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestras. In 2014 she will perform Bach’s St John Passion at the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Rattle and join the orchestra and conductor for an extensive autumn tour of Bach’s St Matthew Passion, including performances at the Lucerne Festival and Carnegie Hall.
 
During the early 2000s Ko?ená established her reputation as an opera singer of the front rank. She brought charisma, glamour and vocal authority to her onstage interpretations of roles in the operas of Mozart, making her debut at the Salzburg Festival in 2002 as Zerlina in Don Giovanni and joining Simon Rattle the following year for a series of performances as Idamante at the Salzburg Easter Festival, the Glyndebourne Festival and in Berlin and Lucerne. Ko?ená made her first appearance at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 2003 as Cherubino in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro and has been a regular guest at the Met ever since. She sang Zerlina for the company’s tour to Japan in 2006 and returned to New York to take the title-role in Jonathan Miller’s production of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande in 2010/11. Her opera credits also include Angelina in Rossini’s La Cenerentola (Royal Opera House, 2007), Oktavian in Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier (Berlin Staatsoper, 2009), Lazuli in Chabrier’s L’étoile (Berlin Staatsoper, 2010), and the title-role in Bizet’s Carmen (Salzburg Easter and Summer Festivals, 2012).
 
Her latest release on the DG label is, Prayer (issued in April 2014), and comprises of works for voice and organ, blending sacred songs by Bach, Bizet, Dvo?ák, Duruflé, Purcell, Ravel and Verdi with Lieder by Schubert and Wolf. Her albums also include a recital of songs by Britten, Ravel, Respighi, Schulhoff and Shostakovich; Songs My Mother Taught Me, an anthology of Czech songs made in company with Malcolm Martineau; two recordings of arias by Handel and Vivaldi with the Venice Baroque Orchestra and Andrea Marcon; a collection of French opera arias with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Minkowski; Mahler’s DesKnaben Wunderhorn with Christian Gerhaher, the Cleveland Orchestra and Boulez; and Love and Longing, a programme of orchestral songs by Ravel, Dvo?ák and Mahler with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Rattle. She was named Artist of the Year by Gramophone in 2004 and has won numerous other awards since, including the Echo Award, Record Academy Prize, Tokyo, and Diapason d’or. Ko?ená was appointed a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 2003 for her services to French music.