Dietrich Henschel
Baritone
The baritone Dietrich Henschel is known as a regular guest at major opera houses, as a valued interpreter of song and oratorio, as the inventor and protagonist of a wide range of multimedia projects. His repertoire ranges from Monteverdi to the avant-garde.
After the stunning success of the Sevilla-show Olé at the “Festival Oudemuziek” in Utrecht, Dietrich Henschel’s 2024/2025 season starts following up the series of events of Arnold Schönberg’s music for his 150th anniversary: the fantastic Ode to Napoleon, a flamboyant statement against dictators and fascism, which were performed in September at the “Festival 20.21 – open mind, open ears” in Leuven and at the “Oxford Song Festival” in October, to be followed by the giant oratorio Gurrelieder which takes place at the Disney Concert Hall in December with Zubin Mehta conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. Further in the season are Lied Recitals with Schönbergs vocal works (among others at the Schönberg Center in Vienna).
Other highlights of the season are Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis with Orchestre philharmonique Royal de Liège, Britten’s War Requiem at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence.
Henschel began his international career with a co-production between Opéra de Lyon and Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris in the title role of Busoni’s opera Doktor Faust, for which he won the Grammy Award of the Best Opera Recording.
The singer’s leading roles include Figaro in Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Wolfram in Wagner’s Tannhäuser, Monteverdi’s Ulisse and Orfeo, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Alban Berg’s Wozzeck and Dr. Schön in Lulu, Golaud in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande and Nick Shadow in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress. Contemporary opera also has an important part in Henschel’s repertoire; many great composers such as Pèter Éötvös, Detlev Glanert, Manfred Trojahn, Peter Ruzicka or Chaya Czernowin entrusted him with important roles in the premieres of their works.
In orchestral concerts, Henschel regularly works with conductors such as Sylvain Cambreling, Kazushi Ono, Cornelius Meister and Vladimir Jurowski. Recordings with Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Philippe Herreweghe, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Sir Colin Davis document his oratorio work. He has performed scenic versions of Schubert song cycles in La Monnaie, Theater an der Wien, Norske Opera Oslo and the Komische Oper Berlin, among others.
In the project IRRSAL – a triptych of forbidden love, conceived together with the director Clara Pons, orchestral songs by Hugo Wolf were combined with a feature film shot especially for their live performance; the great success of this project led to the follow-up project Wunderhorn, an international co-production involving 8 partner institutions, including La Monnaie, Brussels, BBC Symphony Orchestra London and De Doelen, Rotterdam.
