Christoph Pohl
The German baritone Christoph Pohl is one of the most sought-after singers in his voice type. Following his studies at the University of Music and Drama in Hanover, he was a member of the Opera Studio of the Hamburg State Opera from 2003 to 2005, and made his debut with this company as Papageno (Die Zauberflöte).
He is a prize-winner of several national and international competitions, including the 2008 International Robert Schumann Competition. In the same year he was awarded the Christel Goltz Prize.
From 2005 to 2018 Christoph Pohl was an ensemble member of the Semperoper Dresden, where his roles have included Wolfram (Tannhäuser), Marcello (La bohème), Dandini (La Cenerentola), Papageno, Count Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro), Guglielmo (Così fan tutte), Olivier (Capriccio), Harlequin (Ariadne auf Naxos), Ottokar (Der Freischütz), Danilo (Die lustige Witwe), Dr Falke (Die Fledermaus) and Valentin (Faust). In 2011/12 he made acclaimed role debuts as Figaro (Il barbiere di Siviglia), Belcore (L’elisir d’amore) and Count (Capriccio), and in the title role of Jaromír Weinberger’s Švanda dudák.
Other roles which he has performed at the Semperoper include Herald (Lohengrin), Lescaut (Manon Lescaut), Giorgio Germont (La traviata), Posa (Don Carlo), Fiddler (Königskinder) and the title role of Eugene Onegin.
In addition to his engagements in Dresden his appearances have included Wolfram, Zurga (Les Pêcheurs de perles) and Dr Albert Felgentreu in the world premiere of Detlev Glanert’s Oceane at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Ottokar at the Stuttgart State Opera, Papageno at the Leipzig Opera, Marcello and Wolfram at Theater Erfurt, Figaro, Wolfram and Harlequin in Hamburg, Danilo at the Frankfurt Opera, Count (Capriccio) in Lyon and Wiedehopf in Braunfels’s Die Vögel at the Opéra national du Rhin. At the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, he has appeared in a new production of Peter Eötvös’s Die Tragödie des Teufels and as Count Almaviva. In 2013 he sang Wolfram at the BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall in London, where he returned in 2019 for Haydn’s The Creation.
Other engagements have included Wolfram and Danilo at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Amfortas (Parsifal) at Opera Vlaanderen, Count Francesco Cenci in Berthold Goldschmidt’s Beatrice Cenci at the Bregenz Festival and Thoas (Iphigénie en Tauride) and the title roles of Salieri’s Falstaff and Rossini’s Guillaume Tell at the Theater an der Wien. In February 2024 he performed the role of Alfonso VIII in the world premiere of Glanert’s Die Jüdin von Toledo at the Semperoper.
As a recitalist and concert singer he has performed throughout Europe, in Japan and in the USA. In 2011 he released his first CD, featuring Lieder by Mahler, Liszt, Pizzetti and Rihm. In 2017 he gave his debut Lieder recital at London’s Wigmore Hall.
Future engagements will take him to the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen, the Hamburg State Opera and to Covent Garden. He also remains closely connected to the Semperoper Dresden.