A member of the ensemble at the Staatsoper in Hanover, mezzo-soprano Christiane Iven is a sought-after artist in the whole Europe.
The German mezzo-soprano Christiane Iven studied voice at the Academy of Music and Theater in Hamburg under Judith Beckmann. While a student she was honoured with a number of competition prizes, including the first prize at the German Music Competition in Bonn in 1990 and participated in song interpretation courses led by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in Berlin.
Even had an engagement as a lyric mezzo-soprano at the Bremen Theater from 1992 to 1996 and has been a member of the Mannheim National Theater since the 1996-1997 season. Christiane Iven is now a member of the ensemble at the Staatsoper in Hanover. Her most important roles are Octavian (Rosenkavalier), the Composer (Ariadne auf Naxos), Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni), Gräfin Geschwitz in Alban Berg´s Lulu and Charlotte in Massenet´s Werther. Guest engagements have taken her to the Hamburg Staatsoper, the Leipzig Opera, the Bonn Opera and the Theater in Basel.
The artist is a sought-after concert soloist in Germany and throughout Europe. She has concertized with ranking orchestras and conductors. She has collaborated with Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields (Händel´s Jephtha and the 9th Symphony of Beethoven), John Eliot Gardiner (Walpurgisnacht of Mendelssohn), Helmuth Rilling (Bach´s B minor Mass (BWV 232)), Fabio Luisi and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (Mozart masses), Hartmut Haenchen (symphonies of Gustav Mahler), Simone Young (Le marteau sans maître of Boulez) and András Schiff and the Musikkollegium Winterthur (Bach St. Matthew Passion (BWV 244)), to name but a few.
Iven has appeared as a guest at numerous music festivals, including the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Ludwigsburg Castle Festival and the Schwetzingen Festival.
For this season Christiane Iven has been invited to the Lucerne Festival, will appear at the Beethovenfest Bonn in Missa solemnis under Enoch zu Guttenberg, in Weimar with Gustav Mahler’s Lied von der Erde and with Reger’s An die Hoffnung in Bremen. In Hannover the artist can be heard as Countess in Le nozze di Figaro, as Emilia Marty in Janácek’s Die Sache Makropoulos as well as in the role of Arminda in La finta giardiniera. At the opera in Cologne she will take on the part of Gutrune in Wagner’s Götterdämmerung.
Christiane Iven has a particular love for lieder. She gives frequent recitals and has made many broadcast recordings (including songs of Hugo Wolf and Richard Strauss and Schoenberg´s Pierrot lunaire). The young artist has also a number of radio productions with the NDR, WDR, and Radio Free Berlin to her credit.
Christiane Iven is professor of voice at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hannover.
