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 Doktor und Apotheker (Schloss Rheinsberg), The Indian Queen (Long Beach Opera), Jedermann (Tanztheater Oldenburg), Ein venezianisches Fest (Musikfestpiele Sanssouci) 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 important festivals throughout Europe, under the direction of Thomas Hengelbrock and Gustav Leonhardt, and appears regularly with 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.