Christian Gerhaher
Baritone

Christian Gerhaher studied medicine and singing and completed his training through masterclasses with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Inge Borkh. His close partnership with the pianist Gerold Huber developed during his student days. For more than thirty years they have set a golden standard of song interpretation. In September 2023 they curated their third Liedwoche at Schloss Elmau.
Christian Gerhaher has worked worldwide with conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Herbert Blomstedt, Bernard Haitink, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Mariss Jansons, Andris Nelsons, Antonio Pappano, Kirill Petrenko, Simon Rattle and Christian Thielemann, and appears with orchestras including the London Symphony Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic. Christian Gerhaher is also a regular guest at the festivals of Edinburgh, Lucerne and Salzburg, the Rheingau Music Festival and the BBC Proms.
In 2023/24 he has returned to the Berlin Philharmonic for Hartmann’s Gesangsszene, to the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra for Haydn’s Creation, to the Concertgebouw Orchestra for Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem and to the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra for Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder under Daniel Harding, and performed with the Czech Philharmonic under Jakub Hrůša and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Jaap van Zweden.
His most important operatic roles include Posa (Don Carlo), Giorgio Germont (La traviata), Count Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro), Orfeo, Don Giovanni, Simon Boccanegra, the title role in Henze’s Prinz von Homburg und Lenau in Holliger’s Lunea. His performance as Wozzeck at the Zurich Opera House was a career milestone. He regularly sings his key role of Wolfram (Tannhäuser) in Berlin, Vienna, London and Munich. Most recently he performed this role in 2023 at the Salzburg Easter Festival and in his debut at the Metropolitan Opera. In 2023/24 he returned to the Bavarian State Opera as Wolfram, and also sang Amfortas (Parsifal) and Golaud (Pelléas et Mélisande) there.
As an exclusive artist with Sony Music his recordings include song cycles by Schubert and Mahler with Gerold Huber. Their recording Robert Schumann: Alle Lieder was awarded an OPUS Klassik in 2022. Most recently he has recorded Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde in the piano arrangement, and also published his first book Lyrisches Tagebuch, a compendium of essays on Lied interpretation.
Christian Gerhaher is professor of Lied interpretation at the University of Music and Theatre in Munich and also teaches at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
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