June Anderson (born December 30, 1952) is an American dramatic coloratura soprano. She is known for bel canto performances of Rossini, Donizetti, and Vincenzo Bellini.
Subsequently, she has extended her repertoire to include a wide variety of other roles, including those from the Russian repertoire and works by Richard Strauss. In 2008, Anderson was elevated to Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government and in 2007 received a "Victoire d'honneur" in the Victoires de la musique classique in Paris.La cérémonie des Victoires "classiques" au rythme de la musique américaine, MSN Actualités , March 1, 2007.
Anderson has performed in noted opera houses including La Scala, Covent Garden, La Fenice, Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago and Teatro Colón. She has collaborated with conductors Leonard Bernstein, James Levine, Charles Dutoit, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Seiji Ozawa, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Kent Nagano and Michael Tilson Thomas.
Early life June Anderson was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in Wallingford, Connecticut. She attended Lyman Hall High School where she was the 5th highest in academic standing among 505 graduates in the class of 1970. She began vocal studies at age 11 and at age 17 was the youngest finalist (at that time) in the Metropolitan Opera auditions.Walter Price, Music; A Soprano Who Feels She Can Say No, The New York Times, October 29, 1989.
She received a degree from Yale University in French, graduating cum laude and then decided to pursue a career in singing. Anderson studied voice under Robert Leonard in New York City. She had numerous auditions but no engagements at first. She has said that she continued her pursuit as a challenge, giving herself a deadline of two years (after which she would, if unsuccessful, enter law school). "No one wanted to know my name. I was down to my last $50. That's when I decided I was going to be a singer if it killed me!"Opera News, August 1986.
Career
Early career Anderson sang in several productions in the Yale/New Haven area while still a high school student. In 1968, she sang in a production of Haydn's "L'infedeltà delusa" at Yale University. In 1970 she appeared as Gilda with the New Haven Opera Company in a production of Verdi's Rigoletto.
She made her professional opera debut as the Queen of the Night in Mozart's The Magic Flute at the New York City Opera in 1978.J. Warrack and E. West, The Oxford Dictionary of Opera (1992). Several years later, she would voice the Queen of the Night in the Oscar-winning Amadeus, directed by Miloš Forman. While at New York City Opera, she sang in a wide range of operas including The Golden Cockerel by Rimsky-Korsakov, Rigoletto and La Traviata by Verdi, Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia, Giulio Cesare by Handel, and Mozart's Don Giovanni (as Elvira). In 1981, she sang the three lead soprano roles in Les Contes d'Hoffmann by Jacques Offenbach, the first soprano to do so at New York City Opera since Beverly Sills in 1973.Edward Rothstein, Review/Opera; June Anderson's 'Hoffman' Triple, The New York Times, March 9, 1981.
1980s
Anderson left New York City Opera in 1982 and embarked on a European career. Anderson's career in this decade was marked by numerous debuts in quintessential bel canto roles in major European opera houses. She also participated in the recording of operatic works rarely heard in this era, including: Rossini's Mosè in Egitto, Wagner's Die Feen, Bizet's La jolie fille de Perth, Adolphe Adam's Le postillon de Lonjumeau, Fromental Halévy's La Juive, and Daniel Auber's La muette de Portici.
After being recommended to an Italian agent by Sherrill Milnes, she made her European performance debut in 1982 in the title role of Rossini's Semiramide in Rome. In 1983, Anderson debuted in Florence and Geneva in the title role of Lucia di Lammermoor by Donizetti, a part which became one of her most frequent portrayals. She also sang Die Feen by Wagner in Munich, and appeared in North America: Bellini's I puritani in Edmonton and Il barbiere di Siviglia in Seattle.
In 1984, she performed her first Amina in Vincenzo Bellini's La sonnambula in Venice, opening 135 years to the day after Maria Malibran's final Amina in that same theatre. She also appeared as Marie in La fille du régiment by Donizetti in Parma. In 1985, Anderson debuted as Isabelle in the historic revival of Robert le Diable by Meyerbeer in Paris. That year she also appeared in a rarely seen Verdi work, La battaglia di Legnano, in Pittsburgh.
In 1986, she performed her first Desdemona in Rossini's Otello in Venice. The same year, she made her debut at La Scala in Milan in La sonnambula, and her debut at Covent Garden in productions of Semiramide and Lucia di Lammermoor. She also appeared in La fille du régiment at the Opéra-Comique in Paris.
Anderson returned to the Opéra-Comique in 1987, appearing as Elvira in Bellini's I Puritani, and gave a recital at the Paris Opera with Alfredo Kraus. In Italy, she returned to La Scala for her debut as Giuletta in I Capuleti e i Montecchi and returned to Venice for her first performance of Beatrice di Tenda, also by Bellini.
Anderson also appeared in a 1988 concert version of Beatrice di Tenda at Carnegie Hall, with the Opera Orchestra of New York. Elsewhere in 1988, Anderson focused on Rossini roles: playing her first Armida in Aix-en-Provence, appearing in Otello at the Pesaro Festival, and debuting as Anna in Maometto II (an early version of Rossini's Le siège de Corinthe) at the San Francisco Opera (she had previously recorded this work with Samuel Ramey in 1983). She also appeared that year in Luisa Miller by Verdi at the Opéra National de Lyon. In 1989, she made her long-awaited debut at New York's Metropolitan Opera as Gilda in Rigoletto, with Luciano Pavarotti. The New York Times review wrote of her Met debut:Miss Anderson's debut as Gilda, although belated, could not have been more welcome. The Metropolitan is not rich in artists of this caliber. The tall soprano left America a decade ago to build a phenomenal European career, chiefly in the florid works of Bellini, Donizetti and Rossini. She demonstrated in a Caro nome of exquisite taste, effortless fluidity and pinpoint precision that she is a master of the bel canto style. She is comfortable above high C, but the lower ranges do not suffer in quality or power. The wide leaps of the Caro nome coda were taken effortlessly and squarely on the note. The Met audience does not often hear a trill as thrushlike and as precise as Miss Anderson's, nor a soprano who can soar as grandly over the ensemble in the quartet.Donal Henahan, Review/Opera; Review/Opera; Pavarotti and Vocalism Star in Met's 'Rigoletto', The New York Times, November 6, 1989.
In July 1989, she sang at the inaugural gala of the new Opéra Bastille in Paris, performing Ombre légère from Le pardon de Ploërmel, by Meyerbeer. (Not a fan of the modernist space, Anderson was later quoted as saying, "The place looks like a gymnasium."Witold Rybczynski, Sounds as Good as It Looks, The Atlantic, June 1996. )
Leonard Bernstein selected her to perform as Cunegonde in a December 13, 1989 London concert version of Candide conducted by the composer (for which she later shared an award for Best Classical Album at the 34th annual Grammy Awards (1992), given for the December 1989 Abbey Road Studios recording by the same cast and conductor).
Twelve days later, again with Bernstein, she appeared in Berlin for a Christmas Day performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor "Choral" at the Schauspielhaus, celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall. Along with Anderson, it featured mezzo-soprano Sarah Walker, tenor Klaus König and bass Jan-Hendrik Rootering; the concert was recorded by Deutsche Grammophon and published under the title "Ode an die Freiheit". The performance was broadcast live in more than twenty countries to an estimated audience of 100 million people, and was performed by an orchestra and chorus made up of many nationalities: from Germany, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, the Chorus of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, and members of the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden; from the Soviet Union, members of the Orchestra of the Kirov Theatre, from the United Kingdom, members of the London Symphony Orchestra; from the US, members of the New York Philharmonic, and from France, members of the Orchestre de Paris.
1990s In the next decade, Anderson continued to pursue traditional bel canto roles, but also expanded her repertoire. Anderson began with a January 1990 performance of the Berlioz song cycle Les nuits d'été at Carnegie Hall, with Giuseppe Sinopoli conducting London's Philharmonia Orchestra. Later that year, she appeared at the Metropolitan Opera in an opulent production of Rossini's Semiramide, with Marilyn Horne and Samuel Ramey. In 1990, Anderson also performed in Pesaro in a production of the rarely seen Ricciardo e Zoraide, also by Rossini, and visited the Lyric Opera of Chicago in a new production of Lucia di Lammermoor directed by Andrei Şerban. She closed 1990 with her New Year's Eve gala concert with Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic broadcast nationwide on Live from Lincoln Center on PBS.
In February 1991, she returned to Carnegie Hall to perform La sonnambula with the Opera Orchestra of New York.Bernard Holland, Reviews/Music; June Anderson in 'La sonnambula', The New York Times, February 16, 1991 Also in 1991, she participated in the Gala celebrating the Silver Anniversary of the "new" house of Metropolitan Opera, performing "Je suis Titania" from Mignon, conducted by James Levine. She also sang with Pavarotti at a gala concert in Teatro Valli in Reggio Emilia, Italy to celebrate the 30th anniversary of his first stage appearance.
In 1992, she created her first Elena in La donna del lago at La Scala, the house's first production of the opera in 150 years, staged to mark the bicentenary of Rossini's birth. That same year, she appeared in a controversial new production of Lucia di Lammermoor at the Metropolitan Opera staged by Francesca Zambello.Michael Walsh, Mad, Bad and Dangerous, Time (magazine), December 7, 1992 Edward Rothstein wrote in The New York Times:
[S]ome of the audience's outrage may have been due to the contrast between the staging and the many musical virtues that survived in the performance, which was the most complete version of the score ever presented at the Met. June Anderson -- who must have had black-and-blue arms by the evening's end, so often was she grabbed and tossed about -- sang Lucia with more and more refined empathy as the opera proceeded....She delivered a mad scene that combined virtuosic control with a lovely, haunting innocence.Edward Rothstein, Review/Opera; Love Among the Ruins: the Met's New 'Lucia' , The New York Times, November 21, 1992