“She is simply one of the best singers in the world,” proclaimed the New York Sun triumphantly after another of Diana Damrau’s spectacular performances at the Metropolitan Opera. And while The Guardian gushed: “The German soprano...has become a cult figure”, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung noted succinctly: “Whoever says coloratura says Damrau”. Hailed as “singer of the year” by Opernwelt, Diana Damrau bounds from one phenomenal success to the next, appearing on the world’s leading stages above all in works by Mozart and Strauss, for which she seems absolutely predestined.
Yet in spite of her busy private and professional life, Diana Damrau agreed to let the filmmaker Beatrix Conrad accompany her over the course of nine months. We are there, behind the stage, at performances and rehearsals in Geneva, New York, Paris and Munich, as well as at recitals and at the recording studio. Finally, we share the singer’s joy in the birth of her baby boy – and of this remarkably open-hearted and intimate film portrait of a down-to-earth diva.
In private moments with her parents and her first teacher, Damrau talks about her childhood and youth, about her discovery of opera while watching TV, her early career and her international breakthrough in 2002 in roles such as Donna Anna and Zerbinetta (“the pillar of my profession”, she says about the demanding coloratura role in Strauss’ “Ariadne auf Naxos”). The film portrays an exciting, high-intensity, fast-paced jet-set life tempered by the harmony of a rewarding family life with her husband, her parents and, at the end of the film, with her brand-new baby!
