Arleen Auger

In 1974, Auger left the Vienna State Opera to pursue her career in concert and devote more time to teaching at the Salzburg Mozarteum, where she was a professor in the early-1970s. Among her pupils was soprano Renée Fleming, whom she met while studying as a Fulbright scholar in Germany.

In the late-1970s Auger was based in Frankfurt, where she was a professor of song at the University of Frankfurt. She continued to sing recitals, in oratorios, and in opera.

She made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1978 as Marzelline in Fidelio under Karl Böhm. In 1980, she was offered Konstanze in Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Met but did not sing it.

Auger travelled to Japan in the mid-1970s with Helmuth Rilling to perform as a soloist in Bach's St Matthew Passion. They went on to make over 40 recordings together. Her debut at La Scala was in 1975 in L'enfant et les sortilèges. From this time, she turned to lyrical roles in opera, preferring concert singing in early music, as well as lieder, often accompanied by pianist Irwin Gage. She performed most of the soprano parts in Helmuth Rilling's Bach cantata cycle of the mid-1970s to mid-1980s, with several appearances at Rilling's Oregon Bach Festival. She also commissioned new song cycles by Libby Larsen (Sonnets from the Portuguese) and Judith Lang Zaimont. Auger’s association with Rilling led to her first break in the United States when Blanche Moyse, director of the New England Bach Festival, heard her sing with Rilling at the Oregon Bach Festival in 1980 and signed her for a series of concerts the following season.

Auger sang the Alleluia from Mozart's Exsultate, jubilate at the wedding of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson in 1986 during the signing of the register.

She recorded the Exsultate, jubilate along with the Great Mass in C minor under Leonard Bernstein in 1990. In May 1991, Auger triumphed as a featured soloist with the Bach Choir of Bethlehem, performing the Mass in B minor, Sheep may safely graze, and other works at the Choir's annual Festival. On December 5, 1991, the bicentenary of Mozart's death, she sang his Requiem with Cecilia Bartoli, Vinson Cole, René Pape, and the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Georg Solti in St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna.

In 1993, she won a Grammy Award for “Best Classical Vocal Performance” for her recording titled The Art of Arleen Auger (Works Of Larsen, Purcell, Schumann, Mozart). It was her fourth nomination and first win.