In the 2024/25 season, the young male soprano Dennis Orellana celebrated successes on the concert platform as Bellezza in Handel’s Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno at the Knechtsteden Early Music Festival and in Modica, as Alessandro in Caldara’s Il Venceslao at the Warsaw Philharmonie, as Hunahpú in Peter Sellars’s version of Purcell’s The Indian Queen under Teodor Currentzis at the Berlin Philharmonie, in Antwerp and in Paris, as Ernesto in Bononcini’s Griselda at the Theater an der Wien and in a series of solo concerts. He also took the title role in a production of Marianna Martines’s oratorio Isacco at the Vienna Kammeroper.
Dennis Orellana was born in San Pedro Sula (Honduras) and until 2024 studied singing at the Escuela Superior de Canto in Madrid. He has participated in masterclasses with Emanuela Salucci in Rome and with Carolina Alcaide in Madrid, and spent an Erasmus study year at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Stuttgart.
Following performances in two student productions — as Amor in Filippo Piccinini’s La selva sin amor and as Cherubino (Le nozze di Figaro), Dennis Orellana made his professional debut in August 2021 singing the role of Berardo in Porpora’s Carlo il Calvo at the Teatro Auditorio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, performing with the Baroque orchestra Armonia Atenea under Markellos Chryssicos and alongside Max Emanuel Cenčić, Julia Lezhneva and Franco Fagioli. In 2022, appearances followed as Moth in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Wilhelma Theater in Stuttgart and as Zeffiro in Albinoni’s Il nascimento dell’Aurora and Ernesto (Griselda) in concert performances at the Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival. In 2023 he returned to Bayreuth for the solo concert Si suoni la tromba, before touring with this programme in 2024.
His stage engagements in the 2022/23 and 2023/24 seasons included Darius in Keiser’s Nebucadnezar at the Schwetzingen Court Theatre and at Theater Magdeburg, and acclaimed performances as Mozart’s Ramiro (La finta giardiniera) at the Salzburg Landestheater and as Sifare (Mitridate) at the Midsummer Mozartiade in Brussels and as part of Les Festivals de Wallonie in Mons and Namur. On the concert platform he sang Ernesto (Griselda) in Wrocław, Alessandro (Il Venceslao) in Gleiwitz and at the Theater an der Wien, the title role of Teseo at the Handel Festival in Halle and Berardo (Carlo il Calvo) at La Scala, Milan and at the Konzerthaus in Dortmund. He made his Salzburg Festival debut in 2023 in The Indian Queen under Teodor Currentzis.
