Photo: Astrid Nielsch
Biography
Julie Comparini undertook professional stage acting training in her youth and later completed degrees in cognitive science/linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley and early music singing at the Hochschule für Künste in Bremen.
As a specialist in early music, new music and interdisciplinary theater pieces, she has appeared ― as singer, dancer or actor ― in productions such as Orpheus, oder die wunderbare Beständigkeit der Liebe (Donaufestwochen), Doktor und Apotheker (Schloss Rheinsberg), Weihnachtsoratorium revisited (Festspielhaus St. Pölten), Die Gelbe Tapete (theaterbar Berlin) and King Arthur (Ruhrtriennale, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden). She is a founding member of the Belgian Ensemble Sospiri Ardenti , for whom she created the scenic concerts Liefde en Magie bij Shakespeare, Métamorphoses 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, Gustav Leonhardt and Marc Minkowski, and appears regularly with the Balthasar-Neumannn-Chor, the Schola Heidelberg and Ensemble Weser-Renaissance.
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.