Borletti-Buitoni Trust
BBT Artists
Rewarding Musical Excellence
Christianne Stotijn was supported by BBT between 2005 and 2009.
Dutch mezzo-soprano Christianne Stotijn was born in Delft and studied violin and voice at Amsterdam Conservatoire. She continued vocal studies with Udo Reinemann and Dame Janet Baker and is currently coached by Josef Loibl. Her prizes have included ECHO Rising Stars Award 2005/2006, Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award (2005) and Nederlands Muziekprijs (2008), in her second year as a BBC New Generation Artist.
A passionate interpreter of art songs, Christianne works with pianists Joseph Breinl and Julius Drake, as well as with violist Antoine Tamestit, her brother the double bassist Rick Stotijn and the Oxalys Ensemble in chamber repertoire.
A profound influence has been Bernard Haitink: under his direction she performed with the Royal Concertgebouw, the Boston, Chicago and London Symphony Orchestras.
Christianne has also worked with Claudio Abbado, Ivan Fischer, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Andris Nelsons, Gustavo Dudamel, Mark Elder and Jaap van Zweden, in repertoire from Berlioz, via Elgar, Mahler, Wagner and Mussorgsky to Berg, Britten, Henze and Peter Lieberson. Michel van der Aa jointly dedicated his 2009 song cycle Spaces of Blank to Christianne and the Royal Concertgebouw and she premièred Thomas Adès Totentanz at the BBC Proms 2013. Her recording of the work, with Adès and the Boston Symphony, won a 2020 Gramophone Award.
Her operatic roles range from Handel and Monteverdi, via Rossini and Berlioz, via Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky, to Wagner. In 2020, at Strasbourg’s Opéra du Rhin, she made her role-debut as Kundry in Parsifal.
Artistic director of the Udo Reinemann International Masterclasses, Brussels, since 2013, Christianne has also taught the Royal Conservatory of Gent since 2017. Her 2010 recording of Tchaikovsky songs received a BBC Music Magazine Award. Her MDG recording of Frank Martin’s Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke won an ECHO Award Liedeinspielung des Jahres 2008.
Last updated: March 2021
Read Christianne Stotijn’s blog: “El Duende”
A dream has come true: together with my pianist Joseph Breinl, I have always wanted to record the most stirring songs of Schubert, Berg and Wolf based on a theme of Magic and Imagination. Thanks to the Borletti-Buitoni Trust I have been able to realize this dream, in partnership with Onyx Records, at Potton Hall in Suffolk a wonderful place to record. It’s such a challenge to find somewhere to record a CD where there is supportive teamwork to enable space for creative inspiration. I spent the most wonderful days recording my first CD and I am now fully engaged in thinking of a new challenge for a second disc. The Borletti-Buitoni Trust has helped me enormously for which I am very, very grateful.
Photographs by Marco Borggreve