Florian Boesch

Born in 1971, the Austrian baritone Florian Boesch, who comes from a Viennese family of singers, received his first singing lessons from his grandmother Ruthilde Boesch. He began studying at Vienna’s University of Music in 1997 and completed Robert Holl’s class in lieder and oratorio there. He launched his international career in 2003 as Papageno at Zurich Opera. Today, he is closely associated in particular with the Theater an der Wien, where he has appeared in new productions of Handel’s Saul and Orlando and will guest perform in the fall of 2023 in a staged performance of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin. Sir Simon Rattle engaged Boesch as Méphistophélès for Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust at the Berlin Staatsoper; he has appeared as Guglielmo in Mozart’s Così fan tutte at the Salzburg Festival, as Berg’s Wozzeck at Cologne Opera, and as Count Almaviva in a production of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro conducted by Sir András Schiff at the Salzburg Mozart Week. In the 2022-23 season, he made his debut at the Vienna Staatsoper with the Mahler project Von der Liebe Tod. Boesch has been artist-in-residence at London’s Wigmore Hall, the Konzerthaus in Vienna, and the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, among other venues. He worked closely with Nikolaus Harnoncourt and has also performed with Riccardo Chailly, Gustavo Dudamel, Iván Fischer, Daniel Harding, Pablo Heras-Casado, Mariss Jansons, Vladimir Jurowski, Robin Ticciati, and Franz Welser-Möst. Lieder singing is an important part of his work: in addition to traditional recitals, which have taken him to the most important festivals and major metropolises, he also devotes himself to staged performances of significant song cycles. Together with the Tyrolean Musicbanda Franui, he has developed the projects Alles wieder gut and Himmelerde. Florian Boesch received the Edison Award in 2012 for his recording of Loewe ballads. Since 2015, he has taught lieder and oratorio at the University of Music in Vienna.

Lucerne Festival debut on 12 September 2006 as Poeta in Salieri’s Prima la musica, poi le parole under the direction of David Stern.

July 2023