Soprano Barbara Hannigan divides her time between singing on the world’s major stages and conducting leading orchestras. The Berlin Philharmonic, Münchner Philharmoniker, Gothenburg Symphony, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, and the Toronto Symphony are among the orchestras with whom she holds close relationships. Barbara has worked with the most prominent conductors, including Simon Rattle, Kent Nagano, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Andris Nelsons, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Kirill Petrenko, David Zinman, Vladimir Jurowski, Antonio Pappano, Alan Gilbert and Reinbert de Leeuw. Her commitment to the music of our time has led to an extensive collaboration with composers including Boulez, Dutilleux, Ligeti, Stockhausen, Sciarrino, Barry, Dusapin and Abrahamsen.
Notable operatic appearances include the title role in Pelléas et Mélisande, which Hannigan performed in two consecutive summers: Katie Mitchell’s staging at the 2016 Festival d’Aix-en-Province conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, as well as in Krszysztof Warlikowski’s 2017 staging of the work at Ruhrtriennale conducted by Sylvain Cambreling. Singing with “ease, virtuosity and colour that you hear from no other singer of today” (Le Figaro), Hannigan sang Lulu in Warlikowski’s acclaimed 2012 production at La Monnaie in 2012 and more recently in Christoph Marthaler’s new production at Hamburg Staatsoper in 2017.