Christian Gerhaher

While completing his medical studies, the baritone Christian Gerhaher, who was born in Straubing in 1969, studied voice at the Munich Academy of Music, where he and his regular piano partner Gerold Huber took Friedemann Berger’s lieder class. He additionally studied in master classes with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, and Inge Borkh. The focus of Gerhaher’s artistic work is singing lieder, as seen in his dedication to the great Romantic repertoire and also to new works that he has premiered, including, recently, cycles by Heinz Holliger, Jörg Widmann, and Wolfgang Rihm. In the 2016-17 season he gave recitals in Salzburg, Munich Berlin, Paris, Milan, and London and as part of a major tour of the United States, singing such works as Brahms’s Die schöne Magelone, his recording of which was released in the spring of 2017. Along with his performances in the concert hall, Gerhaher dedicates himself to selected opera projects. He has performed the role of Papageno in The Magic Flute at the Salzburg Festival and the title role in Henze’s The Prince of Homburg at the Theater an der Wien. Other credits include Monteverdi’s Orfeo, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and Debussy’s Pelléas at Oper Frankfurt; Berg’s Wozzeck at Zurich Opera; and Posa in Verdi’s Don Carlo at Bavarian Staatsoper. Wolfram from Wagner’s Tannhäuser is his signature role for his portrayal of which he received the Laurence Olivier Award in 2011. Gerhaher enjoys a close association with the Berlin Philharmonic, which engaged him as artist-in-residence in the 2013-14 season. During this past season he sang there in Mahler’s Lied von der Erde under Bernard Haitink. Christian Gerhaher’s discography has garnered many awards, including the International Opera Award; in 2016 he received the Heidelberger Frühling’s Music Prize.

LUCERNE FESTIVAL debut on 5 April 2003 in Haydn’s oratorio The Creation conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt.

April 2017