Soloists

Christian Gerhaher

During his studies under Paul Kuen and Raimund Grumbach, German baritone Christian Gerhaher attended the Opera School of the Academy of Music in Munich where he studied lied interpretation with Friedemann Berger. While completing his medical studies Christian Gerhaher perfected his vocal training in masterclasses given by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Inge Borkh. Christian Gerhaher teaches select masterclasses, including at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and is an honorary professor at the Academy of Music in Munich.

Together with his regular piano accompanist Gerold Huber, Christian Gerhaher has devoted over 30 years to recording and performing lieder worldwide and they have been awarded several prestigious prizes.

Christian Gerhaher has worked with renowned conductors and orchestras and given concerts at the world’s major concert halls. Orchestras which regularly invite him to perform include the London Symphony Orchestra, the Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, the Swedish Radio Symphony, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic, where he was the first ever singer to be artist in residence.

As well as giving concerts and recitals, Christian Gerhaher is also a highly sought-after performer on the opera stage and has received several prizes such as the Laurence Olivier Award and the German theatre prize Der Faust. His roles include Posa (Verdi, Don Carlo), Amfortas (Wagner, Parsifal), Lenau (Holliger, Lunea, world premiere in 2018), Germont (Verdi, La Traviata), Figaro and Count Almaviva (Mozart, Le nozze di Figaro) Wolfram (Wagner,Tannhäuser) as well as the title roles in Monteverdi’s Orfeo, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra and Henze’s Der Prinz von Homburg.

A milestone in Christian Gerhaher’s opera career was his debut in the title role of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck in September 2015 at Zurich Opera House in the celebrated staging by Andreas Homoki. In 2023 he was featured in two new productions of Wozzeck, first at the Royal Opera House in London (stage director: Deborah Warner, conductor Antonio Pappano), followed directly by performances at the Festival d’Aix en Provence, with Simon Rattle conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, in a production by Simon McBurney which was previously postponed due to the pandemic.

Christian Gerhaher’s recordings, including the Schubert, Schumann and Mahler cycles accompanied by Gerold Huber, are released by Sony Music.

Photo: Gregor Hohenberg