Biography

Derek Welton

Current as of July 2020

Australian bass-baritone Derek Welton is now firmly established as a noted interpreter of Wagner. After singing Donner (Das Rheingold) for Opera North and Klingsor (Parsifal) at the Beijing Music Festival, he made his role debut as the Herald in a star-studded production of Lohengrin under Christian Thielemann at the Semperoper Dresden in 2016. These successes led to his critically acclaimed debuts at the Bayreuth Festival as Klingsor and in the role of Wotan (Das Rheingold) at the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

As a soloist at the Deutsche Oper Berlin from 2015 to 2020, Derek Welton amassed a wide repertory of roles, including Klingsor, the Doorman (Das Wunder der Heliane), Altair (Die ägyptische Helena), Peter (Hänsel und Gretel), Forester (The Cunning Little Vixen), Prus (The Makropulos Case), Mr Flint (Billy Budd) and Saint-Bris (Les Huguenots). He sang the Duke of Albany in the 2017 Salzburg Festival production of Reimann’s Lear under Franz Welser-Möst, a role he reprised at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the Paris Opéra. Other important guest engagements have included Pandolfe (Cendrillon) at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Klingsor at the Bavarian State Opera and Orest (Elektra) at the Palau de les Arts in Valencia, as well as concert performances of the title role of Bluebeard’s Castle at the George Enescu Festival and Pizarro in Act 2 of Fidelio with the Hallé Orchestra.

In the 2020/21 season Derek Welton will make his debuts at the Vienna State Opera as Orest under Franz Welser-Möst, with the Berlin Philharmonic as the Messenger (Oedipus Rex) under Kirill Petrenko and with the Basel Symphony Orchestra as the Wanderer in Act 3 of Siegfried under Mark Elder. He will also return to the Deutsche Oper Berlin as Wotan (Das Rheingold) and to the Bavarian State Opera as Klingsor. His role debut as Wotan in Die Walküre at Theater Dortmund has been postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Derek Welton has also made a name for himself in the concert hall, performing a wide range of works that extends from Bach’s Passions to Tippett’s A Child of Our Time and Martinů’s The Epic of Gilgamesh. He has worked with numerous eminent orchestras and leading conductors and is a graduate of the University of Melbourne and of London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama. In 2011 he was a participant in the Salzburg Festival’s Young Singers Project.

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Derek Welton
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Derek Welton
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Derek Welton
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