Steve Davislim

The Australian tenor Steve Davislim began his musical career as a horn player before taking up vocal training at the Victorian College of Arts with Joan Hammond. Classes with Gösta Winbergh, Neil Shicoff, and Irwin Gage rounded out his course of study. Davislim acquired his first stage experiences at Zurich Opera’s International Opera Studio and was then accepted as a member of the permanent ensemble, where he remained from 1994 until 2000. At Zurich Opera he performed such roles as Count Almaviva in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia and sang Mozart roles under the direction of Franz Welser-Möst and Nikolaus Harnoncourt; as an example of contemporary repertoire, he also appeared as the Prince in the world premiere of Heinz Holliger’s Schneewittchen. Davislim was soon invited to sing at other acclaimed opera venues, such as the Berlin and Hamburg Staatsoper companies, where he performed Count Almaviva in Rossini’s Barber; at the Royal Opera House in London (Fenton in Falstaff); in Paris (as Weber’s Oberon) and Vienna (as Stravinsky’s Tom Rakewell) and at the Salzburg Festival, where he made his debut as Pong in Turandot. In December 2005 Davislim performed the title role in Mozart’s Idomeneo at the season opening of La Scala in Milan; he made his Metropolitan Opera debut as Pedrillo in Mozart’s Abduction in 2008. In the 2014-15 season Davislim will appear as Flamand in a production of Strauss’s Capriccio conducted by Christian Thielemann at the Semperoper in Dresden and will sing Pylade in Gluck’s Iphigénie au Tauride at the Grand Théâtre de Genève. In the concert arena, Davislim has worked with such conductors as Pierre Boulez, Riccardo Chailly, Colin Davis, John Eliot Gardiner, Bernard Haitink, Christian Thielemann, Franz Welser-Möst, and David Zinman. His discography includes works by composers from Bach to Martin and Tippett.

LUCERNE FESTIVAL (IMF) debut on 24 August 1999 in Schumann’s Scenes from Goethe’s “Faust” under the direction of John Eliot Gardiner.

August 2014