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Nina Stemme (born May 11, 1963 in Stockholm) is an opera singer known for her warm, solid spinto soprano voice, with some qualities of a dramatic soprano. She sang in two singing competitions, Operalia, The World Opera Competition and Cardiff Singer of the World. As winner of Operalia in 1993, Stemme was invited by Placido Domingo, founder of Operalia, to appear with him in a concert at La Bastille (1993); the same concert also took place on January 1, 1994, in Munich. Since her operatic debut as Cherubino in Cortona, Italy, Stemme has appeared with many opera companies, including the Royal Swedish Opera Stockholm, the Vienna State Opera, Semperoper Dresden, Geneva, Zürich, Teatro San Carlo Naples, Gran Teatre del Liceu Barcelona, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera New York, and San Francisco Opera, as well as at the Bayreuth, Salzburg, Savonlinna, Glyndebourne and Bregenz festivals. Her roles include Rosalinde, Mimi in La bohème, Cio-Cio-San in Madame Butterfly, Tosca, Manon Lescaut, Suor Angelica, Euridice, Katerina in Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, the Countess in Le nozze di Figaro, Marguerite, Agathe, Marie, Nyssia (König Kandaules), Jenůfa, Marschallin, Eva, Elisabeth, Elsa, Senta, Sieglinde, Elisabeth in Tannhäuser and Isolde. This last brought her critical acclaim at Glyndebourne Festival Opera in 2003, on disc for EMI Classics with Plácido Domingo, Antonio Pappano and the chorus and orchestra of the Royal Opera, Covent Garden released in 2005 and most recently at the Bayreuth Festival in 2005 and again in 2006. In 2007 Stemme returned in the role of Isolde to Glyndebourne Festival Opera where she first made her debut in the role...

Lyrics & English Translation

As they mockingly sing
behind my back,
well might I make reply
about a boat
which, small and frail,
drifted along the irish coast.
In it a sick
and ailing man
lay miserably dying.
Isolde's crafts
became known to him;
with healing ointments
and soothing lotions,
the wound which tormented him
she faithfully nursed.
He who with sly cunning
called himself "Tantris"
Isolde soon recognised
as Tristan
since in his sword, as he lay there,
she perceived a notch
into which,
as she found with nimble fingers,
there fitted exactly a splinter
which once, in the head
of the Irish knight,
had been sent back to mock her.
Then a cry awoke
from the depths of my heart!
With the gleaming sword
I stood before him,
ready to averge on him, the presumptuous one,
Lord Morold's death.

From his bed,
he looked up -
not at the sword,
not at my hand -
he gazed into my eyes.
His wretchedness
tormented me!
The sword - I dropped it!
The wound that Morold smote,
I healed it so that he recovered
and returned home...
do not accuse me with such a look!


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