Barbara Bonney

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Barbara Bonney
Born	April 14, 1956 Montclair, New Jersey

Barbara Bonney (born April 14, 1956) is an American soprano opera singer.

Bonney was born in Montclair, New Jersey. As a child she studied piano and cello. When Bonney was 13 her family moved to Maine, where she became part of the Portland Youth Orchestra as a cellist. She spent two years at the University of New Hampshire studying German and music and studied abroad her junior year at the University of Salzburg, where she switched from cello to voice. While there she studied at the Mozarteum.

In 1979, Bonney joined the Darmstadt Opera, where she made her debut as Anna in Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (The Merry Wives of Windsor). In the subsequent five years she made appearances throughout Germany and Europe, notably at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London and La Scala in Milan. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1987 in Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos in the role of Nyade and her Vienna Staatsoper debut the same year as Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier. Since then, she has appeared at the major opera houses of the world and at the Salzburg Festival, where she was Servilia in Mozart's La clemenza di Tito. Her reprisal of this role in 2006 was cancelled.

Bonney is widely recognized as one of the finest lyric sopranos of her generation. Along with her wide-ranging repertoire in opera, she is a distinguished recitalist in command of many languages. She appears on more than 90 recordings, including 15 solo recitals.

Her marriage to the Swedish baritone Håkan Hagegård ended in divorce as did the previous one to Austrian tenor Michael Roider. She is now married to the British music management executive Maurice Whitaker and resides in London.

On August 1, 2006, IMG Artists announced that all forthcoming appearances by Bonney were cancelled due to personal reasons and that they would no longer be representing her.

Bonney is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.