Biography
Dietlinde Turban-Maazel
Dietlinde Turban’s first stage appearance at the age of 19as Gretchen in Goethe’s Faust in the Residenz-Theatre in Munich broughther national fame. In rapid succession she starred in new productions of Lessing’s Minna von Barnhelm (as Minna), Shakespeare’s Othello (as Desdemona), for which she received the Bad Hersfeld Festival’s prize forbest actress, and in works of Anouilh, Giraudoux and others. She was invited asguest star at the State Theater in Bonn and the Josefstadt Theatre in Vienna.
Thanks to scores of films and plays filmed for television, Ms. Turban won Germany’s coveted Bambi Award by popular vote as Best Actress ofthe Year (1983).
Among her credits: the title role in Goethe’s Stella and Schiller’s Love and Intrigue (Luise), the role of Mozart’s sister-in-law Aloysia in the French film biography of the composer, a starring role in the American thriller Bloodline, and the part of Euridice in Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s adaptation of Monteverdi’s Orfeo.
Her film credits include Die Kalte Heimat, Die Undankbare, Peter Schamoni’s The Castle in Königswald and the World War II story Mussolini and I, in which she played opposite Anthony Hopkins.
In 2004 Ms. Turban founded the New York based Crescent Theatre Company. She premiered Christopher Rothwell’s One Woman Play “Constantly Risking Absurdity” in Castleton and at the Cherry Lane Theatre, New York, performed it at the George Mason University and was also invited with this play to Salzburg, Austria, by the American Austrian Foundation. Recently the Crescent Theatre Co. merged with Kid Pan Alley (see www.kidpanalley.org).
Ms. Turban has recorded a number of audio books as well as CDs in collaboration with young composers. She also performs dramatic readings of literary masterpieces both in the United States and in Europe and regularly tours with recitals based on works by Andersen, Fontane, Heine, Kafka, Rilke, Schiller and Thomas Mann.
Ms. Turban studied violin, classical dance and voice in her home town Munich, Germany and in Aspen, Co. After a decade of an intense acting career she married the conductor Lorin Maazel and devoted much of her time to raising their three home-schooled children while traveling throughout the world. In 1996 she co-founded a private "charter" school on her Virginia estate, based on the holistic ideas of Rudolf Steiner, “The Hearthstone School”, and developed a pilot educational project designed to explore new ways of integrating vital artistic and aesthetic values into school curricula.
Ms. Turban coaches young opera singers in performance skills, song interpretation, German and French, and holds Acting Master Classes and Workshops in various summer programs.