At the International Erkel Singing Competition that launched her international career, Júlia Hamari sang 32 songs in ten languages, with the experts unable to detect any accent. As she celebrates her 75th birthday, the artist will also be holding a master class at Müpa Budapest, which will close with a gala concert. On this night, the performers (the participants in the master class, together with the singer's former students and surprise guests) will help give the audience a picture of a singularly successful and rich life in music, since the singers taking the stage can all say they were taught by Júlia Hamari.
For her, it is not the meaning of the words that is of primary importance, but their music. And this is what she teaches to this day: instead of mastering the piece in German or French or Russian, as the case might be, it will perfectly reflect the language if it is learned in the "language of music”.
A resident of Stuttgart since 1966, the mezzo-soprano was given incomparably rich technical ammunition by Martin Fatime, Oszkár Maleczky, Dr Jenő Sipos, Lore Fischer and Hubert Giesen, and it... was Karl Richter and Wolfgang Gönnenwein who defined - and continue to define - her close relationship with the oratorio. "I belong to the conservative school of Karl Richeter, and I am also romantically in love with the Baroque,” she declared five years ago in Opernwelt. After starting off under the direction of Herbert von Karajan and Carlos Kleiber, her opera career continued on the world's leading music stages. She has worked with director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle and conductors István Kertész, Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Muti, Georg Solti, Eugen Jochum and Helmuth Rilling - just to highlight a few representative names from the list.
Songs - performed with sparkle, self-revelation, technical bravado and, above all, intimacy - have occupied a special place in her career. "But where is there intimacy in the world today?” she asked in the aforementioned interview. "Where are the feelings, where is the love that is the essence, the core of the songs? "Who today is interested in a song recital, regardless of whether it is Romantic, Classical or modern?” The singer, who was 70 years old at the time and once counted Edith Mathis, Edda Moser, Peter Schreier and Josef Protschka among her colleagues, continued: "Only the big stars can afford to leave out the sparkle for a bit. […] Nowadays, everyone is looking for how to be somebody else. Songs are not suitable for this: I am the song. They are like a flower: you have to water them, or else they wither.”
Júlia Hamari is holding her vocal master class on 27 and 28 November in the Auditorium. Passive participation is subject to registration.
Presented by: Müpa Budapest
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