The Austrian soprano Gabriele Fontana, studied in Vienna, where already, during her studies she was the recipient of a number of awards in international singing competitions. Fontana's operatic debut came in 1980 in Frankfurt and since that time she has been celebrated in the opera houses of Salzburg, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Berlin, Barcelona, Trieste, Geneva and Tokyo, to name but a few.

Fontana has also worked alongside many well-known conductors the likes of Pierre Boulez, Daniel Barenboim and Colin Davis and appears frequently in lied recitals. Recent highlights of Gabriele Fontana’s career include her debut at the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth in 2006 and at this year’s Edinburgh Festival, where she sang the role of the Countess in Richard Strauss’s Capriccio.

In this week’s Inspired Minds, Gabriele Fontana talks to Breandáin O’Shea about the music of Richard Strauss, her studies with the renowned soprano Elizabeth Schwarzkopf and the challenges young singers face today.