Charles Workman

The tenor Charles Workman, who was born in Arkansas in the USA in 1965, studied at the Juilliard School in New York and made his stage debut with the Canadian Opera Company in 1991 as the title character in Britten’s Albert Herring. He was subsequently part of the ensemble of New York’s Metropolitan Opera for three seasons; since 1995, he has performed mainly in Europe. Initially, his focus was on works by Handel, Mozart, and Rossini, and he performed such roles as Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni, Idomeneo, and Don Ramiro in Rossini’s La cenerentola, as well as Eisenstein in Strauss’s Die Fledermaus, Prunier in Puccini’s La rondine, and Renaud in Gluck’s Armide. Workman made his Salzburg Festival debut in 1999 as Abaris in Rameau’s Les Boréades under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle; in 2000, he sang Ferrando in Mozart’s Così fan tutte under the baton of Claudio Abbado in Ferrara. Charles Workman is a regular guest artist at such venues as London’s Royal Opera House, the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, the Zurich Opera, the Berlin Staatsoper, the Opéra national de Paris, and Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater. He is also committed to repertoire rarities or novelties; for example, in 2013 he participated in the world premiere of André Tchaikovsky’s Merchant of Venice at the Bregenz Festival, and in 2016 he was part of the world premiere of Thomas Adès’s The Exterminating Angel at the Salzburg Festival. He also premiered there in 2018 in a new production of Reimann’s Lear in 2018. He participated in the world premiere of Jörg Widmann’s Babylon at Berlin’s Lindenoper in 2019, and he performed Hoffegut in Braunfels’s Die Vögel at the Bavarian Staatsoper in 2020 and Malatestino in Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 2021. In 2023 he will take on the role of Polonius in Brett Dean’s Hamlet at the Munich Opera Festival.

June 2022