Georg Nigl

Georg Nigl appears regularly at the world’s leading opera houses, including the Berlin, Bavarian, Hamburg and Vienna State Operas, the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam, the Opéra de Lyon, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the Zurich Opera House, the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, La Scala, Milan, and La Monnaie in Brussels, and at festivals such as the Salzburg Festival, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, the Wiener Festwochen and the Berlin Festwochen. He has worked with eminent conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Teodor Currentzis, Valery Gergiev, Daniel Harding, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, René Jacobs, Kent Nagano, Kirill Petrenko and Esa-Pekka Salonen, as well as with distinguished directors such as Andrea Breth, Romeo Castellucci, Frank Castorf, Claus Guth, Hans Neuenfels, Johan Simons, Peter Sellars, Dmitri Tcherniakov and Sasha Waltz. He also appears as a guest with leading European ensembles such as the Berlin and Munich Philharmonic Orchestras, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Orchestre de Paris.
Born in Austria, Georg Nigl has become a central figure in European music due to his extensive musical network. Not only does he work closely with Wolfgang Rihm and Pascal Dusapin, but Friedrich Cerha, Georg Friedrich Haas, Wolfgang Mitterer, Olga Neuwirth and Matthias Pintscher have also written compositions for him.
In the spring of 2022 Georg Nigl gave the world premiere of Wolfgang Rihm’s Terzinen an den Tod to mark the composer’s 70th birthday. The programme, which was conducted by Ingo Metzmacher, also included Rihm’s Wölfli-Lieder.
The last two season’s highlights have included Cavalieri’s Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo at the Theater an der Wien. He also appeared at the Vienna State Opera and the Teatro Real in Madrid in the title role of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, as Ulisse (Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria) in Vienna and as Alberich in a concert performance of Wagner’s Siegfried with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Simon Rattle at the Luxembourg Philharmonie. In the summer of 2022, he also performed in concerts at the Salzburg Festival and at the Berlin Music Festival as well as in Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Ekklesiastische Aktion and Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival under Thomas Hengelbrock. Other recent highlights include Papageno (Die Zauberflöte) and Macbeth in the world premiere of Pascal Dusapin’s Macbeth Underworld in Brussels, L‘Orfeo and the world premiere of Furrer’s Violetter Schnee at the Berlin State Opera, and Eisenstein (Die Fledermaus) and the title role in Trojahn’s Orest at the Vienna State Opera.
Song recitals have taken Georg Nigl to the Ludwigsburg Schlossfestspiele, the Bremen Music Festival, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, to Schwetzingen and to the Berlin and Paris Philharmonies.
In a poll of critics undertaken by Opernwelt magazine in 2015, Georg Nigl was voted Singer of the Year for his performances as Rihm’s Jakob Lenz. His recording Bach privat with Anna Lucia Richter was awarded a Diapason d’Or in November 2017, while his CD of songs by Beethoven, Schumann and Rihm, Vanitas, received the German Record Critics’ Annual Award in 2021.