Ukrainian baritone Iurii Samoilov joined the Frankfurt Opera in 2014 as a graduate of the company’s Opera Studio. Among his roles in 2021/22 have been Milord Aresping in Cimarosa’s L’italiana in Londra, Danilo (Die lustige Witwe) and Guglielmo (Così fan tutte). In May 2022 he made his Metropolitan Opera debut as Schaunard (La bohème). Plans include his debuts at both the Paris Opéra and the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona.
Highlights of recent seasons include his United States debut in the title role of Eugene Onegin for Detroit Opera, his BBC Proms debut, Belcore (L’elisir d’amore) in Macerata, the title role in Billy Budd at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre, Omar (Le Siège de Corinthe) at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, Masetto (Don Giovanni) at the Salzburg Festival and for the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam and his house debut at the Teatro Real in Madrid in a new production of Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Golden Cockerel under Ivor Bolton.
His roles at the Frankfurt Opera have so far included Papageno (Die Zauberflöte), Riccardo (I puritani), Eugene Onegin, Marcello (La bohème), Mr Astley (The Gambler), the title role in Don Giovanni, Count Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro) and Enrico (Lucia di Lammermoor).
Among the conductors with whom Iurii Samoilov has worked are Richard Bonynge, Antonio Pappano, Antonello Manacorda, Marc Soustrot, Marc Albrecht, Gustav Kuhn, Jonathan Cohen, Roberto Abbado, Sebastian Weigle, Riccardo Frizza, Pablo Heras-Casado, Theodor Guschlbauer, Pier Giorgio Morandi, Erki Pehk, Lorenzo Viotti, Alain Altinoglu, Tadaaki Otaka and Joana Mallwitz, while the directors in whose productions he has appeared include Jonathan Miller, Claus Guth, Pierre Audi, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Harry Kupfer, Keith Warner, Laurent Pelly, Jens-Daniel Herzog, Peter Stein, David Alden, Sven-Eric Bechtolf, Christof Loy and Damiano Michieletto.
