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Bernarda Fink

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Bernarda Fink is an Argentine-Slovenian mezzo-soprano, born on 29 August 1955 in Buenos Aires. Her parents came from Slovenia and had emigrated from Yugoslavia. Fink studied at the Instituto Superior de Arte of the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires and often performed there, including with the Academia Bach. In 1985 she won first prize at the Nuevas Voces Líricas competition and left for Europe, first to Prague, where she worked with Czech orchestras. Later she lived in Carinthia in Austria. Her brother Marcos Fink is also a singer.

Music and breakthrough

In the decades that followed, Fink sang with almost all the major orchestras, from the Wiener Philharmoniker to the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, under conductors such as Nikolaus Harnoncourt, René Jacobs, Philippe Herreweghe and John Eliot Gardiner. She performed in opera houses and at festivals from Salzburg to Tokyo and in halls such as Carnegie Hall. Her recordings appeared mainly on Harmonia Mundi and Hyperion, with operas by Mozart and Handel, the Matthäus-Passion (St Matthew Passion), songs by Schumann and Dvořák and an album Canciones argentinas from 2006.

Influence

Fink is regarded as a singer of the pre-Romantic repertoire, of Baroque opera and church music, but she was also at home in German song. That she kept Argentine folk songs in her repertoire shows that she did not let go of her South American origins. She received, among other honours, a Gramophone Award for Baroque vocal work in 2001, a Grammy Award in 2002 and in 2005 an Austrian decoration for science and art.

Listening

Listening tip. Listen to an excerpt from her album Canciones argentinas and notice how she sings folk music with a voice trained in the classical tradition. Notice whether the sound is warm and restrained or, rather, big.

Discography

Studio albums

Categories: Artists