Manuel Walser
The Swiss baritone Manuel Walser studied singing at the School of Music Hanns Eisler in Berlin with Thomas Quasthoff and was a member of the ensemble of the Vienna State Opera from 2014 to 2019. In 2018 he made his debut at the Berlin State Opera as Harlequin in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, and in 2021 he made his debut at La Scala, Milan, in Salome. He appeared at the Opéra national du Rhin in 2022 as the Speaker in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and made his role debut as Papageno in Clermont-Ferrand in 2023 under Martin Wåhlberg. He has sung Donner in Wagner’s Das Rheingold and Gunther in Götterdämmerung at the Tyrol Festival Erl and returned there in July 2024 for the complete Ring.
Manuel Walser’s busy concert activity has included appearances with renowned orchestras such as the Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Tonkunstler Orchestra of Lower Austria, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Concentus Musicus Wien and Ensemble Pygmalion, and with the J. S. Bach Foundation. He has worked with conductors including Anja Bihlmaier, Alfred Eschwé, Stefan Gottfried, Manfred Honeck, Martin Haselböck, Ton Koopman, Jonathan Nott, Raphaël Pichon, Andreas Spering and Jordi Savall.
Highlights of the 2023/24 season included Beethoven’s Missa solemnis and Ninth Symphony and Bach’s St John Passion under Jordi Savall, Bach cantatas with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra under Kristian Bezuidenhout, Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen with the Residentie Orkest under Andrew Grams, Schumann’s Das Paradies und die Peri at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and Mendelssohn’s Elijah in Ottobeuren.
He is especially passionate about song, and has performed in recital in Barcelona, Paris, Munich, Zurich, at London’s Wigmore Hall, the Vienna Musikverein, the Pierre Boulez Saal, the Berlin Konzerthaus and the Teatro de la Zarzuela, and at the Schwarzenberg Schubertiade, the Schubertíada Vilabertran and the Salzburg Festival. He appears regularly at the Vienna Konzerthaus, where he was promoted as a ‘Great Talent‘ in 2019/20. In 2013 he won first prize and the audience prize in the international competition ‘Das Lied‘.