Peter Galliard

The Swiss tenor Peter Galliard, who was born in 1961 in Chur, had his first vocal training in his native city with baritone Rico Peterelli and later studied at the Feldkirch Conservatory with Maria Eibenschütz and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg with Rudolf Knoll. In 1985 he was a prize winner at the International Mozart Competition; the following year Rolf Liebermann engaged him at the Hamburg Staatsoper, where he remains a member of the permanent ensemble. There Galliard initially performed  the lyric tenor repertoire, singing such roles as Tamino in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Jaquino in Beethoven’s Fidelio, Peter Ivanov in Lortzing’s Zar und Zimmermann, Lensky in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, and Narraboth in Strauss’s Salome. Since then he has increasingly specialized in character roles: Loge and Mime in Siegfried in the new Ring production in Hamburg, the Gingerbread Witch in Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, the Captain in Berg’s Wozzeck, and the demon in Hans Werner Henze’s L’Upupa and the Triumph of Filial Love. Galliard has appeared on the stages of Berlin’s great opera houses, the Dresden Semperoper, and the Frankfurt and Leipzig Opera companies, among others, as well as in Japan, Spain, France, and Israel. He has also recently given concert performances of the role of Mime in Wagner’s Ring cycle under the baton of Kirill Petrenko in Lisbon and in Rome. Galliard has worked with such directors as August Everding, Johannes Schaaf, Harry Kupfer, and Peter Konwitschny as well as with conductors including Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Christian Thielemann, and Ingo Metzmacher.

May 2013