Barbara Hannigan.

Soprano Barbara Hannigan had just finished performing in Kris Defoort's new opera, House of the Sleeping Beauties, in Luxembourg last May when I interviewed her about her career. She had created the work's central role earlier that month in Brussels. Creating roles is nothing new to Hannigan, who has become so renowned in the field of contemporary music that works have been composed especially for her, such as the solo opera, One (2002), by Dutch composer Michel van der Aa, which she took on an 11-country tour. In June 2008, at the Festival of Aix-en-Provence, she created the role of Elle in the two-person opera, Passion, written for her and baritone George Nigl by Pascal Dusapin. She reprised the role for Opera de Rouen last January, while new productions are already planned for Paris and Amsterdam. In March, she sang Gepopo and Venus in a highly celebrated new production of Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre by La Fura dels Baus.

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How did this all come about? As she relates, "I am curious, and although some aspects of the modern repertoire are difficult to incorporate, I am not daunted by a new score. I had excellent training with various musicians, first and foremost Mary Morrison, and with dance and theatre colleagues." After initial studies at the University of Toronto, she moved to London and then to The Hague to continue postgraduate studies, first in contemporary music and then in opera. "After my first year in Holland, I began performing professionally there both in the early- and contemporary-music scenes. I returned to Toronto for a Masters degree with Mary Morrison, but was away in Europe often for other engagements. I finally settled in Amsterdam about six years ago. I bought a house here two years ago in the beautiful Jordaan area, near the Anne Frank House, and am happy to be at home whenever time allows."

Looking over the past eight years, she says she did not have a sudden breakthrough: "It was kind of a slow burn. The first big opportunity overseas was the beginning of my relationship with the Schoenberg Ensemble and conductor Reinbert de Leeuw. We performed several world premieres at the Netherlands Opera [Louis Andriessen's Writing to Vermeer in 1999 and Roger Zuidam's Rages d'amour in 2005] and they also invited me for my first performances of Ligeti's tour de force, Mysteries of the Macabre. That particular concert piece from Le Grand Macabre has taken me all over the world. It broke open my voice and personality in the best way. It was so unbelievably difficult to sing that during the inspiring process of learning it, I developed ease in registers I never would have thought possible."

Hannigan found that success in one engagement opens up all kinds of doors. "My first performance with Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic was in Henri Dutilleux's Correspondances for soprano and orchestra, another favorite mainstay of my repertoire, and it led to many re-engagements and, upcoming, the Ligeti Mysteries and the title role in Stravinsky's Le rossignol for 2010." The world premiere of Dusapin's Passion in 2008, she says, "was a wonderful experience for me. I found so many colors in my vocal palette through learning that piece, and that performance led to my first Lulu engagement for 2012."

Residence in Europe does not mean we won't see her in Canada. "Every two seasons for the past eight years, I have had the pleasure of singing with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and will return in March 2010 with a fantastic opera for solo soprano and orchestra written for me by the Irish composer, Gerald Barry, called La plus forte, a setting of the play by Strindberg."

She still has a desire to pioneer and explore. "I wasn't one of those performers who emerged as a finished product at a young age. I am still very unfinished! Each new opera or concert piece helps me develop further vocally and psychologically." Clearly, composers and audiences alike thrill to her discoveries.