Hanne Fischer
Mezzo-soprano
Lives in Frederiksberg, where she was born in 1966, and grew up in Bagsværd. She made her debut at the Royal Danish Theatre in 1992 as the Third Boy in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, while her true role debut came as Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro in 1993.
She was trained at the Royal Danish Academy of Music and the Opera Academy, and has been a member of the Royal Danish Theatre’s soloist ensemble since 1997.
At the Royal Danish Theatre, Hanne Fischer has performed roles including the Composer in Ariadne auf Naxos, Melibea in Il viaggio a Reims, Charlotte in Werther, Penelope in Odysseus, Ottavia in The Coronation of Poppea, La Frugola in Il tabarro, the title role in Carmen, Sister Helen Prejean in Dead Man Walking, Serena Joy in The Handmaid’s Tale, Blanca in The Exterminating Angel, Fricka in Die Walküre, and Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde.
From 1993 to 1997, Hanne Fischer was a member of the ensemble at Opera Kiel. She has also appeared at the Glyndebourne Festival in England, at the Berlin State Opera, Hamburg State Opera, the opera houses in Antwerp and Ghent, as well as at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.
As a concert singer, Hanne Fischer has performed with all the major Danish orchestras and internationally in major concert halls in Amsterdam, Munich, Berlin, Paris, and London with many of the world’s leading conductors.
She has also appeared on several CD and DVD recordings and has received numerous awards and distinctions, including the Noilly Prat Prize, the Elisabeth Dons Memorial Grant, the Danish Music Critics’ Prize, the Holger Bruunsgaard Grant, the Ellen Gilberg Grant, and the Aksel Schiøtz Prize. She has been nominated for a Reumert Award for her performances as Sesto in La clemenza di Tito, Orpheus in Orpheus and Eurydice, and in Handel’s Jephtha.
What can opera do?
Opera, through the human singing voice, can touch our hearts, minds, and souls like nothing else. The vibrations of the human voice possess an energy that, together with the text, the orchestra, and the human story, can reach deeper into the listener than any other art form.
The listener is the audience—and the audience plays an essential role in what happens on stage, because we are all present together in the moment, and we can feel the audience.
The operatic repertoire contains so many facets of our existence on this earth, from the highly entertaining to the deeply serious. An opera written 250 years ago can be even more relevant today, if we dare to examine how much—or how little—we have developed as human beings in relation to the stories being told on stage. Opera can therefore put everything into perspective and provoke thought, if one is open to it. But one does not need to understand everything—the most important thing is to feel. And here we return once again to the human voice, the music, the text, and the colors and sounds of the orchestra, all of which are best experienced live, in the moment, together with others.
Being present together in the moment is what continually affirms for me why we are all here, why we have a national stage, and why I love to sing—and thus love my work and my life as a singer.
Important roles in your operatic life?
In 2004, I was to sing the trouser role of Sesto in David McVicar’s production of Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito at the Old Stage. A trouser role is a role originally sung by a castrato tenor, but since they no longer exist, it is now performed by a mezzo-soprano or a countertenor.
During rehearsals, I couldn’t find “it.” I couldn’t get deep enough into the character of Sesto—his remorse and pain. I went home crying almost every day because I could sense that the director was not satisfied. At the same time, he insisted that we had to discover it ourselves—but I didn’t really know what it was I needed to find, or how to find it.
My father had died shortly before, and one day during rehearsal I suddenly saw him lying there, dying. I used that same image in every performance, and every evening, during that aria, there was complete silence in the auditorium. It was a moment of total stillness—so beautiful. That was when I truly learned that we must dig deeper into what we carry within ourselves as human beings and as singers, even if it hurts.
I was later awarded the Danish Music Critics’ Prize for my role as Sesto and was nominated for a Reumert Award as Singer of the Year in 2005 for the role. It was a profound journey from which I learned immensely.
Afterwards, director David McVicar took me to Strasbourg, where I sang Fricka in Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, and later Waltraute in Götterdämmerung in his remarkable new production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle. So I must have found “it.”
The role of Sister Helen Prejean in Dead Man Walking has also been a major journey. Engaging with themes such as the death penalty, forgiveness, and faith on such an existential level has broadened my own perspective. It is also a very large role—almost an hour and a half of singing.
Perhaps the most extraordinary part was that Sister Helen is still alive and very active in the debate about the death penalty, and we were in contact via Skype. It is so rare that we perform operas about people who are still living—if they even existed at all. This experience has meant a great deal to me as an opera singer—it doesn’t get more relevant than that, and the audience can truly feel it.
I keep a quote by the actress Gitta Nørby, which I love to use:
“My work is not something I go to and then leave behind. It exists within me, because I myself am the material that works—so I cannot put it aside.”
