Magdalena Kožená

Prior to reaching the age of thirty, mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená—occasionally styled Lady Rattle—had already secured a position of popularity and critical esteem throughout Europe. Observers positioned her as the leading rival to Cecilia Bartoli, though no sign of personal competition between the singers ever surfaced. Her principal domain remains eighteenth-century repertoire, above all the works of Bach, yet she has also registered notable achievements in Romantic opera and song. Reviewers have characterized her instrument at times as “sweet” and at others as “fiery and melting,” the description shifting with the material; steadier qualities include striking vocal agility and a commanding dramatic presence, both widely admired.

Kožená entered the world on May 26, 1973, in Brno, then part of Czechoslovakia and now within the Czech Republic. She began her training at the Brno Conservatory before continuing with Eva Blahová at the College of Performing Arts in Bratislava. Major prizes in her native country and abroad accumulated even before her 1995 graduation, crowned by first place at the sixth International Mozart Competition in Salzburg that same year. The 1996–1997 season found her on the roster of the Vienna Volksoper. Her recording debut arrived in 1997 with an album of Bach Arias for Archiv Produktion. The following year she appeared for the first time at the Drottningholm Festival, taking the role of Paride in Gluck’s Paride ed Elena. Attention drawn by the Bach disc led Deutsche Grammophon to offer an exclusive contract in 1999, which yielded yearly releases. In 2000 she made debuts at the Châtelet in Paris as Gluck’s Orpheus and at the Vienna Festival as Nero in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea. The Aix-en-Provence Festival engaged her as Cherubino in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro in 2001. Throughout this period she maintained an active recital schedule across Europe, remaining comparatively unfamiliar in the United States despite earlier appearances in San Francisco and at Carnegie Hall; engagements at the Metropolitan Opera in Mozart and Janáček productions later strengthened her standing there.

Although Kožená has concentrated chiefly on Baroque and Classical music, she has also explored Romantic territory and twentieth-century Czech song. As a recitalist she has presented and recorded works by Britten, earning favor with the British press. Further distinction arrived in 2003 when her disc of Romantic French opera arias succeeded and she participated in the Opéra Comique’s centenary production of Pelléas et Mélisande; the French government then named her Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Gramophone magazine designated her “Artist of the Year” in 2004. She married conductor Sir Simon Rattle in 2008; the couple has three children, and since the marriage she has also been known as Lady Rattle. A 2009 recording of Martinu’s Julietta fragments earned another Gramophone Award. In the ensuing season she toured with the ensemble Private Musicke in a program drawn from her album Lettere Amorose. A relationship with PentaTone Classics began in 2017 and soon produced several discs, among them Il Giardino dei sospiri and Soirée: Magdalena Kožená & Friends in 2019. Her 2023–2024 season encompassed recitals, orchestral concerts, and operatic appearances on multiple continents, highlighted by the release of Folk Songs in 2023, with Sir Simon Rattle conducting the Czech Philharmonic, and a recording of Handel’s Alcina in 2024, Marc Minkowski leading Les Musiciens du Louvre.