About Brigitte Fassbaender

Brigitte Fassbaender, mezzo-soprano, was trained as a singer by her father and
studied at the Nuremberg Conservatory. She joined the ensemble of the Bavarian
State Opera in 1961, and was named “Kammersängerin” by the state of Bavaria
in 1970. She has devoted a large portion of her career to concert and recital performances; her singing is documented by more than 250 recordings. In 1995,
Fassbaender retired from her singing career to devote herself to directing opera
and theater productions. From 1995 to 1997, she was a director at the theater in
Braunschweig, and from 1999 to 2012 at the Tyrolean State Theater in Innsbruck. Fassbaender has been President of the Richard Strauss Society since 2005,
and since 2010 she has been a member of the German Pour le mérite order.
Fassbaender has been the recipient of an honorary doctorate as well as numerous
awards in recognition of her artistic achievements: such as the German
Record Critics’ Prize (1979), the Bavarian Maximilian Award for Science and Art
(1995), the Music Prize of the City of Munich (2006), and the German Federal
Republic’s Knight Commander’s Cross (2012).