June Anderson - 2000s

2000s

In recent years, Anderson has returned occasionally to her prior roles – appearing in Lucia in São Paulo in 2000 and Athens in 2002, La traviata at the Metropolitan Opera in 2001, and new productions of La sonnambula (Opéra de Marseille, 2004) and Maometto II (Bilbao, 2005). She continues to appear as Norma, in Parma in and Teatro Colón 2001, and at the Opéra de Marseille and the Canadian Opera Company in 2006. Of that latter performance, Toronto's The Globe and Mail wrote:

Bel canto is a term too often bandied about, but it does mean what it says: beautiful singing, but beautiful as distinct from merely pretty; beautiful not only in its musical sensitivity and accuracy of pitch in the face of extreme vocal challenges devised by the composer, but also in its penetration and detailed communication of the emotions encompassed in the music and drama. It was all this that June Anderson's Norma comprehended and conveyed. . . . Anderson, also, as a bonus, looked the part: feminine, classy and dignified. I doubt there's been a markedly better Norma since Callas and Sutherland.

The Toronto Star wrote of Anderson's portrayal in Norma:

he title role is a jewel for any soprano diva's crown. . . .And how very special that one of the great contemporary Normas, American soprano June Anderson, is present to bring down the house. . . . Anderson, a late addition to the cast, has a remarkable dramatic presence. . . Anderson captures the full conflict that besets Norma....The American soprano also captures the role's intimate side, first shown in the famous aria "Casta diva", which invokes the goddess of the moon. Anderson alone is worth the price of admission.

Anderson continues to claim new territory as well, with debut performances in Donizetti's Anna Bolena (Pittsburgh 2000) and Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali (Monte Carlo 2004), The Bassarids by Hans Werner Henze (Théâtre du Châtelet, 2005), Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims (Monte Carlo 2005), and the Richard Strauss operas Capriccio (Naples 2002) and Daphne (La Fenice 2005). Of her debut in Daphne a reviewer in Opera magazine wrote:

The performance seemed to me an absolute triumph for June Anderson. At a career stage where she could reasonably be expected to scale down effort, ambition and new projects, she has instead taken the admirable decision to continue expanding her artistic range - as this first-ever Daphne (follow-up to her recent first ever Capriccio Countess) demonstrated.... he singing offered countless ravishments: crystalline timbre, clean-cut line-delineation, dead-on-target intonation, awesomely easy projection of one perilously exposed high phrase after another.

In 2007, Anderson performed Verdi's Requiem in Paris with conductor Christoph Eschenbach and the Orchestre de Paris, Norma in Leipzig, and at galas at La Fenice in Venice (June 2007), and the Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Athens (July 2007) honoring the 30th anniversary of the death of Maria Callas. She appeared as Anna Bolena in Bilbao in October 2007, and ended the year with Verdi's Requiem in Manchester and at St. Paul's Cathedral in London.

In January 2008, Anderson was elevated from "Officier" to "Commandeur" of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government, the highest level of commendation within the Ordre recognizing "eminent artists and writers, as well as individuals who have contributed to the recognition of French culture in the world." Her 2008 schedule included recitals and concerts in Aix-en-Provence, Brussels, Bordeaux, Paris, a performance with conductor Kent Nagano and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, at the Bel Canto Festival in Québec, and a Christmas concert in Geneva. In 2009, Anderson appeared in the title roles of Norma at Teatro Verdi in Trieste, Italy (February - March 2009), and Lucrezia Borgia at Opéra Royal de Wallonie in Liège, Belgium (June 2009).

In the 2010-11 season, June Anderson added two new roles to her repertoire: Madame Lidoine, in Dialogues des Carmelites at the Opéra de Nice, and Salome (opera) at the Opéra Royal de Wallonie.

Her 2012 schedule includes a further role debut as Pat Nixon in John Adams' Nixon in China at the Théâtre du Châtelet.