Photo: Astrid Nielsch
Biography
Julie Comparini undertook professional stage acting training in her youth and made her singing debut at the age of seventeen in a production of Judas Maccabaeus conducted by Nicholas McGegan. She went on to complete degrees in cognitive science/linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley and early music singing at the Hochschule für Künste in Bremen.A specialist in early music, new music and multimedia theater, she has appeared in operas such as Doktor und Apotheker in Schloss Rheinsberg, The Indian Queen at the Long Beach Opera and King Arthur in the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden as well as in the interdisciplinary theater pieces Die Gelbe Tapete (theaterbar Berlin), Ein venezianisches Fest (Musikfestspiele Sanssouci),Il Caffé d'Amore (Tage Alter Musik Regensburg), and Jedermann (Tanztheater Oldenburg).
She is a founding member of the Belgian ensemble Sospiri Ardenti, for whom she creates innovative theatrical concerts exploring the connections between music, theater, dance and literature and with whom she has performed at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, the Vlaamse Opera in Ghent, the Hessischer Rundfunk in Frankfurt and throughout Flanders. Their highly successful debut program Liefde en Magie bij Shakespeare, presenting music from Twelfth Night and The Tempest in scenic context, was followed by Métamorphoses, which combined French airs de cour with new compositions to tell four stories by Ovid, and De nachtegaal, a pasticcio opera for children with music by G.P. Telemann.
As a concert and ensemble singer she has performed at festivals throughout Europe, under the direction of Thomas Hengelbrock and Gustav Leonhardt, and appears regularly with the Balthasar-Neumann-Chor, the Schola Heidelberg and Ensemble Weser-Renaissance. She has sung more than 50 cantatas by J.S. Bach as part of the project „Laudate Cantate“ at the Kirche Unser Lieben Frauen in Bremen and is a frequent oratorio soloist throughout northern Germany.
Her academic work includes lectures on spatial metaphor in musical discourse, eroticism in music of the English Renaissance, and history and construction of 15th-century manuscripts. She taught early music singing at the Hochschule für Künste in Bremen and gives seminars in Renaissance notation in Germany and abroad.