Georg Zeppenfeld

Georg Zeppenfeld, a native of Attendorn in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, initially received his degree in teacher training in music and German studies.  During this time he also studied concert and opera singing at the Conservatories of Detmold und Köln – Hans Sotin was among his teachers. Following his first permanent positions in Münster and Bonn, he was engaged by the Sächsische Staatsoper Dresden in 2001, which remains his home base. He has additionally performed at all the great opera houses of Europe and at the most renowned American companies. Zeppenfeld  performs such roles from the basso profundo repertoire as Mozart’s Commandatore, Verdi’s Padre Guardiano and Filippo II, Wagner’s Gurnemanz, Daland, and King Marke, and Mussorgsky’s Pimen im Boris Godunov. A key role in his career has been that of Sarastro in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, which he sang in 2005 under Claudio Abbado in Baden-Baden and with which he made his debuts at San Francisco Opera in 2007, the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 2009, and the Vienna Staatsoper in 2011. In 2010 Zeppenfeld made his debut at the Bayreuth Festival as King Heinrich in Lohengrin, and in 2011 he also took on the role there of Pogner in Die Meistersinger.  The latter role he additionally performed last summer at the Salzburg Festival, where he will take part in a new production of Schubert’s Fierabras in 2014. In the field of concert music, Zeppenfeld devotes himself in particular to the works of Bach, Handel, and Haydn as well as to late-romantic oratorios. He has collaborated with such conductors as Pierre Boulez, Riccardo Chailly, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Lorin Maazel, Kent Nagano, Antonio Pappano, and Christian Thielemann For the concert commemorating the 60^th anniversary of the destruction of Dresden, he sang the bass solo in Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem under Daniele Gatti in a performance that was released on DVD.

LUCERNE FESTIVAL debut on 10 March 2008  in Bach’s St. John Passion under Nikolaus Harnoncourt.

February 2014