Werner Güra

Born in Munich in 1964, the tenor Werner Güra gained his earliest musical experience singing with the Regensburger Domspatzen before studying singing at the Salzburg Mozarteum and completing his training with Kurt Widmer in Basel, Margreet Honig in Amsterdam, and Wessela Zlateva in Vienna. Following his first stage appearances in Basel and Frankfurt am Main, he joined the Dresden Semperoper ensemble in 1995, where he sang the great Mozart characters as well as roles by Rossini, Strauss, and Britten. Daniel Barenboim soon invited him to the Berlin Staatsoper; appearances as Tamino (Die Zauberflöte) at the Opéra national de Paris and at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels followed. Güra has also appeared as Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni) at the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music and at the Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden. He took part in the new Zurich Opera production of Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria in 2014. But the chief focus of his work is in the concert hall, where Werner Güra has collaborated with such conductors as Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Chailly, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Philippe Herreweghe, Ton Koopman, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and Roger Norrington. In the 2021-22 season, he sang in Beethoven’s Missa solemnis with the Concerto Köln under Kent Nagano, Beethoven’s Ninth with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Andris Nelsons, and Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang with the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir John Eliot Gardiner, among others. Güra devotes himself intensively to lieder singing. He has performed recitals at London’s Wigmore Hall, at Lincoln Center in New York, at the Schubertiade in Schwarzenberg, and in Cologne and Barcelona. His lied recordings, including accounts of the great Schubert and Schumann cycles and Wolf’s settings of Mörike, have won numerous awards. His most recent release is of Wolf’s Italian Songbook, which appeared in 2021. Werner Güra has taught voice at the Musikhochschule Zürich since 2009.

Lucerne Festival (IMF) debut on 18 August 1996 in Bach’s B minor Mass under Marcus Creed; last appearance on 27 August 2011 in a recital of Schubert and Schumann lieder.

July 2022