Soprano Anna Tomowa-Sintow was born in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria in 1941. When she was young, she appeared on stage as Butterfly’s child in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. She studied at the Sofia Conservatory and debuted in her home town in 1965 as Tatyana in Eugene Onegin. She sang in Leipzig from 1967. In the 1970s, Tomowa-Sintow won two international competitions and made her debuts at the Berliner Staatsoper, the Salzburg Festival, the Wiener Staatsoper, and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1978 as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni. She sang Mozart and Strauss roles under the direction of legendary conductor Herbert von Karajan, who admired her greatly.

--Adapted from The Oxford Dictionary of Music