Barbara Hannigan conducts and performs Rossini, Mozart, Ligeti, and Fauré

Some pianists are conductors and some conductors lead from the first violin stand, but a soprano who leads an ensemble while singing some of the most technically difficult arias of the opera repertoire is truly unusual!

At the head of the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Accademia Di Santa Cecilia, Barbara Hannigan has achieved what many considered impossible. As she describes it, "I was never afraid, but now, with this weird conducting thing, I’m really on a path that’s my own. It’s like walking on virgin snow: there are no footsteps where I’m going." The soprano is astounding in her performance of Ligeti’s Mysteries of the Macabre (three arias from his opera Le Grand Macabre).