A week of masterclasses led by Hillevi Martinpelto and concerts hosted by the Birgit Nilsson Museum celebrate local, national and international talent. The 2022 festival features recitals by this summer's masterclass students (11 August), and Stipendium artist, Cornelia Beskow (12 August), as well as a large family outdoor concert with soloists, a chorus of 100 local singers, the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra and conductor, Evan Rogister. Find program and tickets here.
Soprano Hillevi Martinpelto debuted at the Royal Opera in Stockholm as Cio Cio San in Madame Butterfly and has since performed on most of the world’s leading opera and concert hall stages, for example in Berlin, Munich, Cologne, Dresden, Leipzig, Salzburg, Vienna, Milan, Florence, Rome, Amsterdam, Brussels, Edinburgh, London (where she participated in 8 Proms at the Royal Albert Hall), Glyndebourne, New York, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Tokyo and Hong Kong. She has worked with conductors such as Sir John Eliot…
Birgit Nilsson (1918-2005) was one of the greatest opera singers of the twentieth century. Her superb voice and supreme stage presence were praised by critics and audiences alike, bringing her international recognition as the world’s leading dramatic soprano and a legendary interpreter of especially Wagner, Strauss and Puccini. Birgit Nilsson made her operatic debut at the Swedish Royal Opera in 1946 and achieved international stardom in the mid 1950’s with her debuts in Vienna, Bayreuth, Buenos Aires, San Francisco and Chicago. She added a…
In exactly one year from today, on 17 May 2022, the fifth recipient of the Birgit Nilsson Prize will be announced on Birgit’s birthday. The largest Prize in Classical Music, the 2022 recipient will receive 1 million dollars, which will be presented at a Gala Ceremony held in Stockholm in October of the same year. As Gramophone Magazine wrote following the Prize Ceremony in 2014: “We live in times when it’s increasingly hard for classical music to get itself discussed…
Birgit Nilsson lived on the farm in Svenstad with her parents until she was 23 years old. It was a simple upbringing without electricity or running water and the first amenities were not installed until the 1930s. Birgit helped with all the chores on the farm. She thinned beets, planted potatoes, harvested hay and milked cows. In other words, it was a life far removed from what she would later experience as one of the world’s most famous opera singers.…
This year’s recipient of the Birgit Nilsson Stipendium is Soprano Johanna Wallroth. She receives SEK 200 000 which, thanks to an anonymous donor, has recently doubled in value, making it one of Sweden’s largest scholarships. Johanna Wallroth was thrust into the limelight in 2019 when she took First Prize in the prestigious Mirjam Helin International Singing Competition with her “immediately engaging, intelligent and detailed performance” (Bachtrack). She subsequently joined the Opernstudio of the Wiener Staatsoper from the start of the 20/21 season…
Internationally active Swedish soprano Miah Persson, grew up in Hudiksvall and now lives in England. After her education at the Stockholm Academy of Opera, she made her debut as Susanna in Mozart's Figaro's wedding in 1998 and has since been a sought-after guest on the world's opera and concert hall stages. In 2011, Miah Persson was appointed court singer. About this year's assignment, Miah Persson says: “It is with great anticipation that I look forward to leading this year's master…
The 2020 Birgit Nilsson Stipendium is awarded to 30 year old Swedish Mezzo-Soprano, Emma Sventelius who receives 200.000 SEK on August 7 in Västra Karup, Skåne, when she will perform in recital as a part of the celebrations for this year’s Birgit Nilsson Days, hosted by the Birgit Nilsson Museum. Like Birgit Nilsson herself, this year’s Scholarship recipient could claim “I sang before I could walk; I even sang in my dreams”. Emma Sventelius was singing in her local church choir in Skåne at the age…
