Peter Seiffert

The tenor Peter Seiffert studied at the Music Academy of his native Düsseldorf and took on his first engagement in 1978 at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein before moving to the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 1984 and launching his international career. Initially at home in the lyric tenor repertoire, in 1988 he undertook his first Wagner role as the title hero in Parsifal at the Royal Opera House in London; in 1990 came his highly touted debut as Lohengrin in Berlin. Since then Seiffert has been at home on the leading international stages, from the Vienna Staatsoper, Opera Zurich, and La Scala in Milan to the Salzburg Festival, the opera houses in Barcelona, Madrid, and Valencia, New York’s Metropolitan Opera, and Los Angeles Opera. He enjoys a close association as well with the Bavarian Staatsoper, which has named him a Kammersänger, as has the Vienna Staatsoper. In 1996 Seiffert made his Bayreuth Festival debut as Stolzing in Die Meistersinger, and he returned in the years following as Lohengrin. With the exception of Siegfried, his repertoire encompasses all of the great Wagnerian tenor roles. Seiffert performed the notoriously difficult role of Tannhäuser for the first time in 1999 at Zurich Opera, and he recently sang it in the spring of 2014 at the Staatsoper Berlin, where he had appeared in his first Tristan in 2006. Seiffert is not only a specialist in the Wagner roles but has also performed such roles from Italian opera as Puccini’s Cavaradossi and Calaf and Verdi’s Otello, while also venturing into the realm of operetta with Danilo from Léhar’s The Merry Widow. Some of the awards which Peter Seiffert’s recordings have won include the Grand Prix du Disque and the ECHO Klassik award.

LUCERNE FESTIVAL (IMF) debut on 5 September 1994 with the Verdi Requiem, along with the Staats-kapelle Berlin under Daniel Barenboim.

August 2014