The soprano who’s worth $1 million
Rupert Christiansen sings the praises of the 2018 Birgit Nilsson Prize-winner, Sweden’s Nina Stemme
Awarding any individual the princely sum of $1million should always be a solemn and complex responsibility. But writing here as a member of the jury in question, I can confirm that there was never much doubt that the soprano Nina Stemme would be the worthy winner of the 2018 Birgit Nilsson Prize – a bounty popularly known as “the Nobel of classical music”, announced in Stockholm yesterday, and by far the largest such honour made to anyone in the performing arts anywhere in the world.
Stemme has long been familiar to British audiences, being perhaps most celebrated for her marvellous interpretation of Wagner’s Isolde at Glyndebourne and Covent Garden, as well as several appearances at the BBC Proms, where she sang the coveted Rule, Britannia slot at Last Night in 2017. She returns to Covent Garden in the autumn to sing the heroic Brünnhilde in the Ring cycle, a role that currently stands at the heart of her repertory.
Why was Stemme chosen for this great accolade? Most of all, of course, on account of superb artistry, grounded in a grandly scaled soprano voice that can scale the fearsome heights of the most physically demanding music that Wagner or Richard Strauss put to paper. But Stemme’s magnificent technique is also informed by a rare intelligence and sensibility – she is the most thoughtful and serious of prima donnas, uninterested in vulgar stunts and highly respected in the business over a career spanning three decades. “If Nina says she’ll do something, she does it,” one opera director told me. “She’s tough, but there’s no nonsense.” It’s probably significant that before she took to the stage she studied for an MBA and knows the value of efficiency and collegiality.
Born in 1963 and married with three children, Stemme has managed to maintain her private life alongside an international working schedule that shows no sign of letting up: new challenges such as the role of the Dyer’s Wife in Die Frau ohne Schatten await her as she continues to enrich her interpretations of Isolde and Elektra. Nor is her work confined to the German Romantics – she loves singing Verdi, she is a distinguished recitalist, and in 2015 appeared in a highly successful new opera based on Hitchcock’s movie Notorious.
There is also something uniquely timely about this particular award. The Prize is established on a substantial endowment left at her death in 2005 by another Swedish soprano, the legendary Birgit Nilsson, who was born 100 years ago this month on a farm near Malmö. Stemme’s voice and personality may be very different in character from Nilsson’s – Stemme has the richer middle voice, while Nilsson had a laserlike top register – but they both excel in the same repertory.
Previously the Prize has been awarded to Placido Domingo, Riccardo Muti and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, but it is marvellously fitting that in the year of Nilsson’s centenary (also marked by re-release of many of her recordings and publication of a magnificent commemorative book, as well as her portrait on the 500 kronor Swedish banknote), the laurel should pass to another Swedish woman who has brought such glory to her art and her profession.