Anna Tomowa-Sintow (Bulgarian: Анна Томова-Синтова, by official transliteration Anna Tomova-Sintova; born 22 September 1941, in Stara Zagora) is a Bulgarian soprano who has sung to great acclaim in all the major opera houses around the world in a repertoire that includes Mozart, Rossini, Verdi, Puccini,Heinrich Marschner,Wagner, and Strauss. She enjoyed a particularly close professional relationship with conductorHerbert von Karajan from 1973 until his death in 1989.
Life
Tomowa-Sintow began studying piano at age six. At sixteen she won a national singing competition. She later attended the National Conservatory of Sofia, where she studied voice with Professor Georgi Zlatev-Tcherkin and soprano Katia Spiridonowa and graduated with diplomas in voice and piano, making her stage debut, for her master class finals, as Tatiana in Tchaikovsky'sEugene Onegin. Upon graduation, she joined the Opera Studio of the Leipzig Opera, where, in 1967, she made her professional debut as Abigaille in Verdi's Nabucco. While with this company she built up her repertoire with the leading roles in Puccini's Madama Butterfly and Manon Lescaut; Verdi's La traviata, Il trovatore, and Otello; Mozart's Don Giovanni; Strauss's Arabella; and Werner Egk's Die Zaubergeige. For many of these roles she studied with the company's music director, Professor Paul Schmitz, who had studied with Richard Strauss.
In 1973, Tomowa-Sintow auditioned for conductor Herbert von Karajan for the upcoming world premiere of Carl Orff's De temporum fine comœdia at the Salzburg Festival. He hired her immediately, and for the next sixteen years, the two worked frequently together in opera houses, concert halls, and recording studios around the world. Karajan called Tomowa-Sintow "the greatest talent I have encountered over the past years." From 1973 through 1991, Tomowa-Sintow was a permanent guest of the Salzburg Festival. With that maestro, she recorded Le nozze di Figaro (1978), Lohengrin (opposite René Kollo and Dunja Vejzovic, 1976–81) and Der Rosenkavalier (with Agnes Baltsa and Janet Perry, 1982).
