She has collaborated with conductors Leonard Bernstein, James Levine, Charles Dutoit, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Seiji Ozawa, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Kent Nagano and Michael Tilson Thomas.
[3] Anderson's career in this decade was marked by numerous debuts in quintessential bel canto roles in major European opera houses.
After being recommended to an Italian agent by Sherrill Milnes,[3] she made her European performance debut in 1982 in the title role of Rossini's Semiramide in Rome.
In 1983, Anderson debuted in Florence and Geneva in the title role of Lucia di Lammermoor by Donizetti, a part which became one of her most frequent portrayals.
She also sang Die Feen by Wagner in Munich,[5] and appeared in North America: Bellini's I puritani in Edmonton and Il barbiere di Siviglia in Seattle.
The tall soprano left America a decade ago to build a phenomenal European career, chiefly in the florid works of Bellini, Donizetti and Rossini.
She demonstrated in a Caro nome of exquisite taste, effortless fluidity and pinpoint precision that she is a master of the bel canto style.
The Met audience does not often hear a trill as thrushlike and as precise as Miss Anderson's, nor a soprano who can soar as grandly over the ensemble in the quartet.
[7]In July 1989, she sang at the inaugural gala of the new Opéra Bastille in Paris, performing Ombre légère from Le pardon de Ploërmel, by Meyerbeer.
Anderson began with a January 1990 performance of the Berlioz song cycle Les nuits d'été at Carnegie Hall, with Giuseppe Sinopoli conducting London's Philharmonia Orchestra.
She closed 1990 with her New Year's Eve gala concert with Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic broadcast nationwide on Live from Lincoln Center on PBS.
[10] Also in 1991, she participated in the Gala celebrating the Silver Anniversary of the "new" house of Metropolitan Opera, performing "Je suis Titania" from Mignon, conducted by James Levine.
On Christmas Day 1991, she, along with soprano Sarah Walker, tenor Klaus König and bass Jan-Hendrik Rootering, took part to the performance of Beethoven's Symphony No.
9 led under the baton of Leonard Bernstein in Schauspielhaus in Berlin; the concert was recorded by Deutsche Grammophon and published under the title "Ode an die Freiheit".
[11] Edward Rothstein wrote in The New York Times: [S]ome of the audience's outrage may have been due to the contrast between the staging and the many musical virtues that survived in the performance, which was the most complete version of the score ever presented at the Met.
June Anderson -- who must have had black-and-blue arms by the evening's end, so often was she grabbed and tossed about -- sang Lucia with more and more refined empathy as the opera proceeded....She delivered a mad scene that combined virtuosic control with a lovely, haunting innocence.
The following year, Anderson appeared as Maria in Tchaikovsky's Mazeppa, in a concert performance at Carnegie Hall with the Opera Orchestra of New York.
She internalized every emotion of the role with her usual intensity and conviction, from desperate gaiety to startled joy at her first stirrings of love for Alfredo, right on through to her deathbed scene, which tugged mightily at the heartstrings of even the most jaded opera-goers Every dramatic gesture seemed careful thought out, yet nothing appeared mannered or merely gratuitous.
Anderson began 1995 by appearing in Paris with Roberto Alagna in another controversial production of Lucia di Lammermoor, staged by Andrei Şerban and designed by William Dudley.
While the International Herald Tribune noted that Şerban and Dudley were greeted by a "chorus of boos", it wrote of Anderson's performance:[T]here were nothing but cheers for the impressive cast.
June Anderson is surely the Lucia of the moment, and although she lent herself heroically to the frenetic demands of the staging, she also sang the role with superb possession of her vocal means and understanding of the psychological subtext.
She also created her first Lucrezia in Verdi's I due Foscari at Covent Garden and ended the year with her debut as Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus at the Metropolitan Opera.
In 1996, Anderson portrayed Joan of Arc in Verdi's Giovanna d'Arco, both in concert versions in New York and Barcelona, and in a stage production at Covent Garden.
[17] In 1998, Anderson spoke in Opera News of her move away from light coloratura roles "into deeper water":I wanted to put it off as long as possible.
"[18]Indeed, in 1998, Anderson played her first Leonora in Verdi's Il trovatore at the Metropolitan Opera, in a cast including Richard Margison and Dolora Zajick.
[20] Anderson continues to claim new territory as well, with debut performances in Donizetti's Anna Bolena (Pittsburgh 2000) and Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali (Monte Carlo 2004), The Bassarids by Hans Werner Henze (Théâtre du Châtelet, 2005), Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims (Monte Carlo 2005), and the Richard Strauss operas Capriccio (Naples 2002) and Daphne (La Fenice 2005).
At a career stage where she could reasonably be expected to scale down effort, ambition and new projects, she has instead taken the admirable decision to continue expanding her artistic range - as this first-ever Daphne (follow-up to her recent first ever Capriccio Countess) demonstrated.... [T]he singing offered countless ravishments: crystalline timbre, clean-cut line-delineation, dead-on-target intonation, awesomely easy projection of one perilously exposed high phrase after another.
In 2009, Anderson appeared in the title roles of Norma at Teatro Verdi in Trieste, Italy (February - March 2009), and Lucrezia Borgia at Opéra Royal de Wallonie in Liège, Belgium (June 2009).