"I'm still fascinated by it all"

Series: Young Opera Talents (II)

Born in Feuchtwangen, Germany, in 1980, Christiane Karg sang her first solo at 10 before winning numerous musical prizes, including sixth place in the 2007 "Neue Stimmen" International Singing Competition.

Photographer: Axel Martens

Slam... the barista puts the "iced latte to go" on the counter, throws down two straws and turns away. "Unbelievable," Christiane Karg says, as she unwraps the straws, balls up the paper and throws it at him. "It's amazing what some waiters think they can get away with," she adds, shaking her head. It's not arrogance, but the voice of experience talking, since the young singer - now performing in Frankfurt as Papagena in "The Magic Flute," Susanna in "Le nozze di Figaro" and Musetta in "La Bohème" - spent years working as a waitress. Even today when she visits her parents in the Bavarian town of Feuchtwangen near Bayreuth, she sometimes dons an apron to take coffee and dessert to guests. "My parents own a café, located in a former monastery," she explains. "It's a family business, and my sisters and I started helping out at a young age."

Today one sister works as a pastry chef and chocolate maker, the other is getting a degree in hotel and restaurant management. As for Christiane, her career on the stage began back in the monastery. "Every year it hosted a summer music festival," she says. "I could see everything from my room. I've never forgotten it." Her father's passion for music also helped, since he often took her to the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth. "I'm still fascinated by it all," she says.

As a child she sang in church and entered musical competitions, where she won at both the state and national levels. After graduating from school, she passed the entrance examination for the Mozarteum in Salzburg - on her first try. There she was lucky enough to be put under the tutelage of Prof. Heiner Hopfner, who remains an advisor and supporter to this day. "He left my voice as it was," Christiane says. "He made sure that I didn't overdo it and didn't copy anyone else, but stayed just the way I am. It was an incredible help." As she speaks, she laughs and gazes into the sun reflecting off the Binnenalster, the smaller of Hamburg's two downtown lakes.

It's a symbolic location. "When I was first given the opportunity in 2006 to work in Hamburg's opera studio, the Binnenalster was the first thing I saw here," she says. "As soon as I did, I knew I wanted to stay." It was an exciting time, living "auf der Schanze," in one of the city's more colorful quarters. "I couldn't go out a lot, since I was onstage most evenings. But it was nice to know that so much was happening right outside my front door," she explains. In the end, she decided to leave, since other promising roles - like the ones in Frankfurt - beckoned, and since she was keen to try something new.

Given her extensive past on the state, stage fright is something that's completely foreign to her. "I sang my first solo at the age of 10, so I'm no longer nervous," she says. What also helped was participating in the Bertelsmann Stiftung's "Neue Stimmen" International Singing Competition in 2007, where she came in sixth - one of the few Germans to win a prize. "I'm still in touch with a lot of the other contestants. They come from all over the world, and on the international level prospects for German singers aren't so great. The performers from South America, for example, have a vocal quality that is warmer. Their voices are larger and have a different tone," Christiane explains. "Of course we all want to sing the major Italian operas, but there are few Germans who can. And certainly not right off the bat.

"What the "Neue Stimmen" competition teaches, she says, is not to get too worked up, not to try too much at once - and that even if the world of art is just like the world of commerce, you can't forget that you're an artist above all else. That's why she still enjoys performing - as well as traveling around the world and putting energy into her fledgling recording career. She doesn't have a lot of time for a private life, even if her family is often sitting in the audience. When asked about a long-term relationship or starting a family, she laughs and gets a faraway look in her eyes. "I don't have the time at the moment. I work a lot, maybe too much," she says. "But for now, that's how it should be. If Mr. Right shows up, all the rest won't matter anyway. But he'd have to be someone very special, the kind of person you'd be willing to change your life for." Where would she like to set up house with him? "In northern Italy, in a villa on Lake Como," she says, laughing once more.


Author: Tanja Breukelchen