Notes from the road: Barbara Bonney in Salzburg.(Brief Article)

For soprano Barbara Bonney, coming to Salzburg means coming home. "It's an obvious choice, simply because I studied here and I know this place like the back of my hand," she says. "The town is a perfect size. I'm a country girl, and I get so sick of being in big cities with cars and taxis and traffic and pollution. It's so great to be in a place where you can jump in a car and be outside town in five minutes. Plus, the place is completely gorgeous."

It would be hard to overestimate Salzburg's influence on Bonney. As a student at the University of New Hampshire ("I was nineteen--I shouldn't even tell you what year that was!"), she enrolled at the town's famous arts school, the Mozarteum, for her junior year abroad and ended up staying there an extra year. A cellist, she didn't consider herself a singer, coming to Salzburg primarily to study German. She lived in a series of cold-water flats and biked everywhere ("even when there was three feet of snow"). To make ends meet, she sang in the choir at the historic Franziskanerkirche (above), noted for its ambitious music programs. "They paid you twenty schillings every Sunday for a Mass," she recalls. "Eventually, they realized I could sing, and so they made me a soloist, which paid really well. That was when I first realized I could make my living by singing."

The young soprano sang in the chorus at the Salzburg Festival (a production of Aida, starring Mirella Freni, Jose Carreras and Piero Cappuccilli, conducted by Herbert von Karajan in 1979), then left for Darmstadt, where she was a member of the opera ensemble. Without time even to complete her studies at the Mozarteum, she was launched. "It was all terribly fast and not conceived or prepared for; it all just kind of happened for me," she says.

Although the soprano, an acclaimed recitalist, returned to Salzburg for concerts over the years, that Aida was her last opera at the festival until 1999, when she took the lead in Rameau's Les Boreades, conducted by Simon Rattle, at the Kleines Festspielhaus; last summer, she sang Pamina in a revival of Die Zauberflote (pictured at right), designed and directed by Achim Freyer, conducted by Bertrand de Billy. She'll return to Salzburg for Despina in Cosi Fan Tutte, again with Rattle, at the Easter Festival in 2004, and for Ilia in La Clemenza di Tito, Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting, next summer.

She praises the scenic beauty of Salzburg: "I have climbed a few mountains," she says, including the majestic Untersberg. "Just looking at them, not even going up them, they give off such a great power and energy. I always come away from them feeling strengthened."

"This is my vacation," she says. "Of ...