Sibylla Rubens

Soprano Sibylla Rubens began in the 1990s to establish a career as a concert and Lieder singer, and, to a lesser extent, opera. She studied at the State Musikhochschule in the town of Trossingen and continued at the Hochschule for Music and Fine Arts in Frankfurt am Main. Her interests after graduation are evident from her continued studies: master classes in Lieder interpretation with Irwin Cage (a great Lieder accompanist and coach), other master classes with Edith Mathis (a great Lieder singer), and continuing studies since 1992 with another noted Lieder singer, Elsa Cavelti, in Basle, Switzerland. Rubens has sung in festivals and concerts all over Europe. She sings the great oratorios and other full-scale works of the Baroque to Romantic era, including Bach cantatas and passions, Mozart masses, Magnificat, and Requiem, Handel's Messiah and Israel in Egypt, Haydn's Creation and Seasons, Mendelssohn's Elijah and Lobgesang, Schumann's Scenes from Faust, Brahms' German Requiem and Fauré's Requiem, and Mahler's Fourth Symphony. In addition, she has performed Alfred Schnittke's Requiem and in Denisov's arrangement of Schubert's Lazarus. She works with both "original instruments" and standard orchestras and their conductors. These include such stars of the concert stage as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Helmuth Rilling, and the Stuttgart Bach Academy, the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, Philippe Herreweghe and the Chapelle Royale, Hartmut Haenchen, the NDR Symphony Orchestra of Hannover, the Amsterdam Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Leopold Hager, the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra under Michael Gielen, Herbert Blomstedt and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Frans Brüggen and the Orchestre de Paris, and Christopher Hogwood and the Beethoven Akademie. Rubens is in demand for summer music festivals, and has been praised for her singing of the Mozart roles of Marcellina (Marriage of Figaro) and Pamina (The Magic Flute) at the Stuttgart State Opera. Beginning in April 2001 she began a tour series of Lieder evenings with bass Thomas Quasthoff. Rubens records on the Hänssler Classics label, and also has appeared on the Harmonia Mundi, Erato, and Decca labels. Her discography includes cantatas, the B minor Mass, and the Christmas Oratorio of J.S. Bach, Handel's Messiah, Mozart's Requiem and Idomeneo, Schubert's E flat major Mass and Lazarus, and, with Quasthoff, Hugo Wolf's Italienisches Liederbuch.