Olaf Bär (Baritone)
Biography
Baritone Olaf Bär still lives in his home town of Dresden where he was for many years a principal member of the Semper Oper and where he continues to make regular guest appearances. As the winner of the inaugural Walther Grüner Lieder Competition, Olaf Bär was launched on an international career and is today considered to be one of the foremost Lieder interpreters of his generation, a reputation which is also documented in his numerous Lied recordings, most of them with EMI.
Olaf Bär appears worldwide in recital and has made major tours of Australia, Israel, Japan and America. He made his Covent Garden recital debut in 1992 and is one of the most frequent guests in London’s esteemed Wigmore Hall but also in most major chamber music halls all over the world.
Equally at home in the concert hall and opera house, Bär’s concert repertoire ranges from the baroque to the contemporary including Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Bach’s St Matthew Passion, Britten’s War Requiem, Brahms’ Requiem and Haydn’s Creation. He has appeared with many of the world’s finest orchestras and conductors including the LSO/Tilson Thomas, the COE/Solti, RCO/Harnoncourt, La Scala/Muti, the RSNO/Runnicles, the NYPO/Masur, the Accademia di Santa Cecilia/Tate and Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks/Maazel.
As an opera singer Olaf Bär has appeared at Covent Garden as Harlekin and Papageno; at La Scala as Papageno; at the Aix Festival as Harlekin and Guglielmo; in Frankfurt as Guglielmo; at the Vienna State Opera as Harlekin and Olivier; at Glyndebourne both as Olivier and Don Giovanni; Papageno in Chicago, marking his American operatic debut, as Mozart’s Count in Rome and in the Flimm/Harnoncourt production in Amsterdam as well as with Seiji Ozawa as part of of the Ongaku-Juku Opera project in Japan; Olivier/Capriccio and Foila in Schubert’s Alfonso e Estrella in Zürich and at the Vienna Festival, Der Graf/Capriccio in Amsterdam and Dr. Falke/Die Fledermaus conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt at the Vienna Festival to mention only some of his engagements.
1998 Olaf Bär was awarded the Schumann-Preis of the city of Zwickau.
Since 2004 hat Olaf Bär is a regular professor for recital at Hochschule für Musik in Dresden.
Zuletzt aktualisiert am 09. Dec. 2011