Benjamin Bruns & Karola Theill
Biography Benjamin Bruns & Karola Theill
Benjamin Bruns
began his singing career as an alto soloist with the boys’ choir in his home city of Hanover. After four years of private singing lessons with Prof. Peter Sefcik, he studied at the Academy of Music and Theatre in Hamburg under the Kammersängerin Renate Behle. While still a student, he was offered a permanent contract by the Theater Bremen, a position which allowed him to build up a broadly based repertoire at an early stage. It was followed by a similar contract with the opera house in Cologne. His professional journey then took him via the Dresden State Opera to the Vienna State Opera, where he remained a member of the ensemble until July 2021.
His musical roster contains Mozart roles such as Belmonte (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), Tamino (Die Zauberflöte) and Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni) but also other important repertoire like Fenton (Falstaff), Camille de Rosillon (The merry Widow), Lysander (Britten: A Midsummer Night's Dream), Don Ramiro (La Cenerentola), Boris Grigorievič (Janáček: Kátia Kabanová) or the Italian Tenor in the Strauss operas Capriccio and Der Rosenkavalier. With Wagner roles like Lohengrin, Loge (The Rhinegold) and Erik (The flying Dutchman) or Matteo in Strauss’ Arabella he made his first steps into the light dramatic repertoire. In spring 2021 he had his debut as Florestan in Beethoven’s Fidelio (1804) at the Vienna State Opera.
The beginning of the season 2021/2021 is marked by his appearance as Tamino in Mozart’s The magic Flute at the Bavarian State Opera. Furthermore he’ll be singing Erik (The flying Dutchman) in Amsterdam and Max in the jubilee performance of Weber’s Der Freischütz (The Freeshooter) at the Konzerthaus Berlin. In May 2021 he will return to the Bavarian State Opera for his role debut as Bacchus in Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos. During the Munich Opera Festival he can be heard as Loge (The Rhinegold) and David (The Master-Singers of Nuremberg).
Oratorio and lieder form an important counterweight to Benjamin Bruns’s stage work. At the heart of his extensive concert repertoire are the great sacred works by Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and Mendelssohn. He has sung with such renowned ensembles as the Berlin Philharmonics, the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonics, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Bach Collegium Japan, the WDR Symphony Orchestra as well as Choir and Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome or the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin. The upcoming season is still under the auspices of Beethoven: Benjamin Bruns will perfom Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony under Masaaki Suzuki in Singapore, under Laurence Equilbey in Paris/Boulogne-Billancourt as well as with the NHK Symphony Orchestra under Pablo Heras-Casado in Tokyo. He will also appear at the Vienna Musikverein with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra for Haydn’s The Creation under Andrès Orozco-Estrada as well as Dvořak’s Stabat mater under Manfred Honeck. In the Stravinsky Anniversary Year 2021 he is invited to sing his rarely performed work Perséphone with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra in Hamburg.
Benjamin Bruns is an awardee of the Bundeswettbewerb Gesang (Federal Singing Competition) in Berlin, the Mozart Competition in Hamburg and the international singing competition of the Schloss Rheinsberg Chamber Opera. The very special honours accorded to him include the 2008 Kurt Hübner Prize awarded by the Theater Bremen and the 2009 Young Musicians’ Prize awarded by the Schleswig- Holstein Music Festival.
His last CD "Dichterliebe", containing Schumann’s Dichterliebe and Der arme Peter, Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte as well as Hugo Wolf’s Liederstrauß (piano: Karola Theilll) was praised by the critics and nominated for both, the International Classical Music Awards and the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis.
