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Dame Josephine Barstow
Soprano
DAME JOSEPHINE BARSTOW is acknowledged as a singing actress of the first rank. Her distinguished career has included acclaimed performances of Salome, Tosca, the Lady Macbeths of Verdi and Shostakovich and an enormous range of roles from Mozart to Janacek via Beethoven, Verdi, Puccini and Richard Strauss. In 1986 she toured the USSR singing in Tbilisi, Riga and at the Bolshoi in Moscow. She created the protagonist in the world premiere of Die schwarze Mask at the Salzburg Festival where Karajan invited her back for Tosca and Un Ballo in Maschera, which she also recorded with him for DG. She has sung with the Paris Opera, the Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich, the English National Opera and at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. She has also sung for all the major American opera companies such as the Metropolitan, New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Houston.

Her current recordings include two recitals, Weill's Street Scene, Beethoven's ninth symphony, Britten's Gloriana which she sang for Opera North to great critical acclaim and Lady Billows in Albert Herring.

She was made a CBE in 1985 and in the same year was presented with the Fidelio Medal on behalf of the International Opera Directors Association - only the sixth such medal to be given. In 1995 she was created a Dame of the British Empire.

Other engagements have included the title role in Salome for the Netherlands Opera which was also televised and the Kostelnicka in a new production of Jenufa with the ENO and for Opera North. She has also sung Emilia Marty (The Makropoulos Case) for Welsh National Opera, Amelia (Un Ballo in Maschera) for the Hong Kong Festival, Tosca for Opera North, Ellen Orford (Peter Grimes) for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and in Palermo and Anna Maurrant (Street Scene) for the Teatro Nacional de Sao Carlos in Lisbon.

In recent seasons she has sung the title roles in Medea, Aida and Gloriana as well as  Marie in Wozzeck for Opera North. In 1998 she sang Ellen Orford in Peter Grimes with Otaka in Tokyo. In early 1999 she will sing in a series of concerts of excerpts of Salome with the English Northern Philharmonia conducted by Stephen Sloane.

Future plans include  Mere Marie (Dialogues des Carmelites) at the English National Opera, Kostelnicka (Jenufa) at the Flanders Opera, Gloriana at Opera North and Kabanicha (Katya Kabanova) for the Netherlands Opera and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

"Not a singing actress but a supreme actress among singers." The Independent

Contact details and further information

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