Corinna da Fonseca Wollheim Wikipedia, Biography, Age, Religion, Bio

Personal Details Summary
Name	Corinna da Fonseca Wollheim (Also known as : Bret Stephens Wife)
Age / How old / Birthday / Date of Birth / DOB	January 30, 1973. As of 2024, she is around 51 years old.
Wedding & Marriage / Husband / Engaged / Spouse / Partner	Married. Check the full bio for relationship details.
Children / No. of Kids	3
Ethnicity / Origin / Heritage / Race	White
Nationality	German

Wiki / Profile Background

Introduction :

Corinna da Fonseca Wollheim is a contributing classical music critic for the New York Times and the founder and artistic director of Beginner’s Ear, a series of deep listening experiences combining meditation and music. Her work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Tablet Magazine, Symphony Magazine, The Strad and other publications.
In person and in print, Corinna is passionate about getting people to listen more closely to themselves, to music, and to each other.

Personal Life : Parents, Family and Education

Corinna was born in Brussels, Belgium, on January 30, 1973, to German parents.
Her grandfather was Hermann da Fonseca-Wollheim, a doctor in Hamburg. In 1944, he was sent to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp for being too friendly to Ukrainian forced laborers. He left behind his wife Käthe, an Expressionist dancer, and his two sons.

One of Hermann’s sons, also named Hermann, became an official in the European Commission and was the father of Corinna.
In Brussels, Corinna attended the European School.
Growing up in a German Lutheran household, Corinna was immersed in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. She trained in the violin. She attended performances at the Theatre de la Monnaie from an early age, which fostered a lifelong love of opera.

From 1991-1994, she studied music and psychology at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College at London University.
In 1995, she obtained an M.A. in Renaissance Theory and Culture from Sussex University, where she wrote her dissertation on the 16th-century feminist writer Moderata Fonte.
In 2000, she obtained a Ph.D. in Italian from Cambridge University with a thesis on the Jewish Venetian poet Sara Copia Sullam.

The same year, Corinna moved to Jerusalem, where she lived for four years. Here, she began working as a journalist, writing for the Associated Press and the Jerusalem Post.
After Jerusalem, Corinna moved to New York, living in Downtown Manhattan. She wrote for the Classical Review until October 2012.
She then started writing permanently for the New York Times and continues to write as a freelance music critic for many publications.

In 2003, Corinna got married to Bret Stephens. Bret is an editor and a pro-Israeli political commentator for the Wall Street Journal. The couple together have three children – two daughters Lara and Katya, and a son Noah.

Fun Facts, Height and Trivia :

Corinna is the cousin of Kristina da Fonseca-Wollheim, a former German middle, and long-distance runner.

Truly a polyglot, Corinna speaks seven languages fluently – English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Dutch, and Hebrew.
She used to row when she studied at the Cambridge University.
Her favorite word in Italian is ‘sprezzatura’ which loosely translates to “studied carelessness, especially as characteristic quality or style of art and literature.”

Corinna converted to Judaism when she married Bret Stephans. The couple had first met at a youth festival. Back then, Bret played the tuba and Corinna played the violin

2 thoughts on “Corinna da Fonseca Wollheim Wikipedia, Biography, Age, Religion, Bio”

Shuaib Muhaymin Apr 9, 2023 at 5:39 pm


How can music teach people about life and history if you can not understand the language of music?
Alice Stamm Mar 7, 2020 at 12:14 am


I loved Ms. Fonseca Wollheim’s recent article about Opera teaching us about death and the different attitudes artist portray when they are about to die…upright and still; to tell you but it is vast and deep and infinite like the ocean…

Just reading these lines so sensitively noted with the love of her father in the background, can help to create that lens Roth Costanzo speaks about. A real gift for your readers!