Anna Maria Kaufmann

In 1990 Anna Maria Kaufmann took over the role of Christine Daaé in the Hamburg production of Das Phantom der Oper, opposite Peter Hofmann, and sang it more than five hundred times across three years; the cast recording became the best-selling German musical album, passing two million copies at home. Born in Edmonton, Alberta, in 1964 and raised in Lacombe, she trained classically at the Robert-Schumann-Institut in Düsseldorf with Erika Köth and Claire Watson. Opera and operetta followed — Der Mikado in Vancouver, La traviata in Wiesbaden and Mannheim, Carmen in Hamburg, Lucia di Lammermoor in Bremen, Evita in Bremen, Die Herzogin von Chicago at the Vienna Volksoper — beside a parallel life on the crossover stage: national anthems at the 1996 European Championship final at Wembley and at the 1998 World Cup, the Rock meets Classic tours, and the album Rock goes Kaufmann. She took German citizenship in 2006.