Barbara Bonney has achieved equal success in art song, oratorio, modern vocal music, and opera. Her well-projected voice is especially suited to Mozart, the Richard Strauss operas, and all but the heaviest lieder, and she has been careful in her choice of repertoire.
Her family was not a musical one, and it was only by chance that her parents discovered she had perfect pitch and a sense of music — when she was three, they noticed that she could perfectly imitate musical noises, such as the melody that one of the household clocks chimed.
When she was older, she started piano, but found that she preferred the more songful tones of the cello. It was an interest in German that led to her singing career — as a college student at the University of New Hampshire she decided to spend a year studying at the University of Salzburg, in Austria.
She worked a wide variety of jobs to support herself, including cooking, selling produce at a vegetable stand, and copying music, and one day a friend suggested that she audition for the famed Mozarteum orchestra there. She hadn’t brought her cello overseas with her, since the costs of shipping were prohibitive, so instead she prepared a song for her audition, and was offered a position as a lieder student.
Spurred on by this success, she auditioned for the Darmstadt Opera (knowing only two arias out of the entire operatic repertoire), and was given the role of Anna in Nicolai‘s Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor (The Merry Wives of Windsor). During her years with the company, she learned over 40 operatic roles.
Here is Ms. Bonney in a Lieder recital:
