Janet Baker

Janet Baker是20世纪最著名的声乐艺术家之一，她1933年生于英国约克郡，年幼时已在当地合唱队开始了自己的艺术生涯，20岁时拜伊赛普、圣克勒和洛蒂·雷曼为师学习声乐，之后又入皇家音乐学院深造。Janet Baker的真正成名始于1964、1965年演出布里顿《卢克莱修受辱记》和普赛尔《狄朵和埃涅阿斯》。在她历时半个世纪的演唱活动中，Janet Baker不仅唱遍了欧洲歌剧中的众多女中音角色，而且也因对巴赫、亨德尔的清唱剧以及舒伯特、马勒、埃尔加、肖松的艺术歌曲的杰出诠释而蜚声乐坛。钢琴伴奏家Gerald Moore曾经说“Janet Baker和Fischer-Dieskau乃是当今全世界两位最伟大的歌曲演唱家”。1977年，Janet Baker被英国女王授予Dame（女爵士）的封号，成为屈指可数的获得这一荣誉的女艺术家之一。
 
Janet Baker是Kathleen Ferrier之后最好的马勒女中音，她能够唱到女高音的声域，因此演唱女中音更加游刃有余，其演唱体现出感情真挚、格调高雅、气息悠长、意境隽永的特点。她和Barbirolli、Horenstein、Kempe、Bernstein等马勒名家合作，多次演出录制了《大地之歌》、带有人声的第2、第8交响曲以及艺术歌曲。
 
Dame Janet Abbott Baker, CH, DBE, FRSA (born 21 August 1933) is an English mezzo-soprano best known as an opera, concert, and lieder singer.
 
She was particularly closely associated with baroque and early Italian opera and the works of Benjamin Britten. During her career, which spanned the 1950s to the 1980s, she was considered an outstanding singing actress and widely admired for her dramatic intensity, perhaps best represented in her famous portrayal as Dido, the tragic heroine of Berlioz's magnum opus, Les Troyens. As a concert performer, Dame Janet was noted for her interpretations of the music of Gustav Mahler and Edward Elgar. David Gutman, writing in Gramophone, described her performance of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder as &intimate, almost self-communing.&