Karan Armstrong

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Karan Armstrong, born in Harve, Montana, on December 14, 1941, is an American soprano. She studied under the famed soprano Lotte Lehmann, and made her operatic debut in San Francisco, as Musetta in La bohème, in 1965. Having won the National Council of the Metropolitan Opera Regional Auditions, she debuted with the Met in a small role in Die Frau ohne Schatten, in 1967. Following other similar parts with the Met, she moved on to the New York City Opera, first appearing as the Reine de Chémakhâ in Le coq d'or in 1969. She was to appear at that theatre many times through 1977.

In 1974, Miss Armstrong first appeared in Europe, as Micaëla in Carmen, at the Opéra du Rhin in Strasbourg. The following year, she created a great sensation with her performance of Salome at the same theatre. Further performances on the Continent followed, including Tosca in Venice, and a definitive Elsa in the 1979 Bayreuth Festival's Lohengrin, directed by her future husband, Götz Friedrich, which was later recorded and filmed. She also sang in Berlin (where she was to be a great favorite), Vienna, Paris, Covent Garden (Lulu, which Robert Craft once declared was "accurately sung and perfectly enacted"), Los Angeles, and the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.

Among the singing-actress's world premieres are of Einem's Jesu Hochzeit (as Death), Sinopoli's Lou Salomé, Berio's Un re in ascolta, Höller's Maître et Marguerite and Matthus's Desdemona und ihre Schwestern. Miss Armstrong's finest roles were arguably in Susannah, Salome, Les contes d'Hoffmann (as Giulietta, which she once sang opposite Norman Treigle), La voix humaine, Lohengrin, Pelléas et Mélisande, Lulu, Wozzeck, Der Rosenkavalier, Die tote Stadt, Parsifal, Erwartung, Die Walküre (as Sieglinde), Katya Kabanova, The Makropulos Case, Fidelio, Mathis der Maler (as Ursula), Tannhäuser (as Venus, with René Kollo) and Dialogues des Carmélites (as Mother Marie of the Incarnation).

The Kammersängerin's celebrated husband, by whom she has a son, died in 2000.

[edit] Discography

Wagner: Lohengrin (Hofmann; Nelsson, 1982) [live] CBS
Menotti: Songs (Francesch, 1983) Etcetera
Berio: Un re in ascolta (Adam; Maazel, 1984) [live] col lengo
Henze: The Bassarids (Riegel; Albrecht, 1986) koch schwann
Landowski: Montségur (G.Quilico; Plasson, 1987) [live] Cybelia
Zemlinsky: Lyric Symphony (Kusnjer; Gregor, 1987-88) Supraphon

[edit] Videography

Verdi: Falstaff (Bacquier, Stilwell; Solti, Friedrich, 1979)
Wagner: Lohengrin (Hofmann; Nelsson, Friedrich, 1982) [live]
"Richard-Wagner-Abend" [includes Wesendonck-Lieder and Liebestod] (Adam; Masur, 1988) [live]