Hermine May & Manuel Lange
Biography Hermine May & Manuel Lange
Hermine May
Romanian-born mezzo-soprano Hermine May studied singing with Prof. Sylvia Geszty at the State University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart. She has won numerous prestigious competitions and began her singing career as a member of the ensemble at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Since then, she has worked as a freelance singer and has continuously developed the dramatic roles in her field. Today, Carmen, Amneris, Eboli, Ortrud, Kundry, Brangäne, Venus, Dalila and Azucena are among her favourite roles, which she has sung at opera houses in Turin, Rome, Verona, Naples, Copenhagen, Strasbourg, Nice, Graz, Shanghai and Hong Kong, among others.
In 2012 she made her debut at the Scala di Milano with “Une voix” in the Opera “Les contes d‘ Hofmann“. The same year Hermine May sang Kundry in Parsifal at the Richard Wagner Festival in Wels (Austria). Brangäne/ Tristan and Isolde and Venus/ Tannhäuser followed at the Festival which prepared her way for this repertoire.
Musically, she was influenced through her work with Zubin Mehta. Under his baton she sang the Magdalene in “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, also the Zemlinsky Maeterlinck–Lieder and the alto part in Beethoven‘s Symphony No. 9 with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in Tel Aviv. Raffael Frühbeck de Burgos, Nello Santi, Pinchas Steinberg, Friedemann Layer, Teodor Currentzis, Gianluigi Gelmetti and Ralf Weikert are other important conducters who gave her artistic impulses.
On the concert stage, she has had great success with the compositions by Gustav Mahler, the Verdi-Requiem, Brahms’ Alto Rhapsody and Wagner’s Wesendonck-Lieder. From the beginning of her career she concentrated extensively on the Lied repertoire.
Hermine May’s CD recordings include Bellini’s “Il Pirata” with Lucia Aliberti conducted by Marcello Viotti, Schubert’s Mass in E-Flat with Jonas Kaufmann, Hermann Prey and Deon van der Walt under the baton of Sylvain Cambreling and Carl Loewe’s “Die drei Wünsche”. DVD-productions of Carmen and Aida/Amneris demonstrate her creative power on stage.
Since 2020 Hermine May has been a faculty member of the Rostock University of Music and Theatre.
Manuel Lange
The Berlin-born pianist studied piano with Oleg Maisenberg in Stuttgart and Hans Leygraf in Salzburg and Berlin. He also took song masterclasses with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Aribert Reimann and Wolfram Rieger. During his studies, he won first prize for piano accompaniment in the international Paula Salomon-Lindberg Song Competition „Das Lied“, the special prize for best piano accompaniment at the Hilde Zadek Voice Competition in Passau and the Hanns Eisler prize at the Academy of Music „Hanns Eisler“.
In 2006, he came together with baritone Sebastian Noack to found the MEISTERLIED concert series in Berlin, which is primarily dedicated to German romantic Lied. After several years of working as Song Repertoire Professor at the Berlin University of the Arts, Manuel lange accepted a call of the Hochschule für Musik Detmold to become Professor of Lied Accompaniment and Lied Composition.
Manuel Lange has appeared in concert partnering Anne Schwanewilms, Mojca Erdmann, Maria Bengtsson, Sibylla Rubens, Stella Doufexis, Lothar Odinius, Jussi Myllys, Sebastian Noack and many more on all major concert venus throughout Europe and gets invited at festivals such as the Baden- Baden summer festival, the Ruhrtriennale, the Lake Constance Music Festival, Autumn Music Days in Bad Urach and the Bebersee Festival.
Manuel Lange lives with his wife and two children in Berlin. He is the twin brother of the composer Marius Felix Lange.
