Biography

Mingjie Lei

Current as of August 2023

The Chinese tenor Mingjie Lei studied at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, the Manhattan School of Music in New York and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. He participated in the Merola Opera Program at San Francisco Opera and was a member of the Ryan Opera Center at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Recent engagements include staged performances of Haydn’s Missa in tempori belli under Lorenzo Viotti in Amsterdam, Don Narciso (Il turco in Italia) and Ernesto (Don Pasquale) in Hamburg and Zurich, Saëb (Barkouf) in Zurich, Fenton (Falstaff) at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and Ferrando in concert performances of Così fan tutte with musicAeterna and Teodor Currentzis in St Petersburg, Vienna, Bremen and Lucerne, where he also appeared in concert with Cecilia Bartoli. Other appearances include Fenton at Opera Colorado and Egeo (Medea in Corinto) at the Teatro Nuovo in New York, as well as Iopas (Les Troyens), Remendado (Carmen) and Gastone (La traviata alongside Plácido Domingo) in Chicago.

Current and future projects include Il viaggio a Reims in Berlin and Die Zauberflöte in Amsterdam.

Since the start of the 2018/19 season, Mingjie Lei has been a member of the Stuttgart State Opera, where he has appeared in Don Pasquale, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Ariadne auf Naxos, Così fan tutte, Der Prinz von Homburg, Iphigénie en Tauride and Die Zauberflöte.

In 2017 he appeared at the Salzburg Festival as Jeppo Liverotto in concert performances of Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia under Marco Armiliato. His work as a concert singer includes Haydn’s The Creation, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and St Matthew Passion, Stravinsky’s Pulcinella and Handel’s Messiah and Semele in New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Chicago. He sang solo parts in Mozart’s Requiem and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on a European tour with Jordi Savall.

Mingjie Lei has won several competitions, including the ARD Music Competition and the NEUE STIMMEN International Singing Competition in Gütersloh, as well as winning the Song Prize at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition in 2019. In 2016 he took part in the Young Singers Project at the Salzburg Festival, appearing in a children’s version of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, as well as in concerts with Camerata Salzburg and the Mozarteum Orchestra.

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