Bernhard Berchtold

The Austrian tenor Bernhard Berchtold studied at the Innsbruck Conservatory, continuing his vocal studies at the Mozarteum in Salzburg with Horiana Branisteanu and Harmut Höll. Throughout his career he has been awarded numerous prizes: prize-winner of the International Summer Academy of Salzburg in 1999 with a concert at the renowned Salzburg Festival. In Graz, Bernhard Berchtold won several prizes at the international competition “Franz Schubert and Modern Music”, including the special prize for the “Best Interpretation of a Work by Franz Schubert”. From 2003 till 2011 he was engaged at Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe where he enlarged and cultivated a grand Mozart and Handel repertoire. There he performed amongst others Tamino, Ferrando, Don Ottavio, Belmonte and Lurcanio in Handel’s “Ariodante”, Jan in in Janacecks “Tagebuch eines Verschollenen”, as Singer in “Rosenkavalier”, Adolar in Weber’s “Euryanthe” and Alfred in “La Traviata”.
In the season 2009/10 he had his debut as Henry in “Die schweigsame Frau” by Richard Strauss with the famous staging of Marco Arturo Marelli at Teatro de la Maestranza Sevilla and the Semperoper Dresden. He was guest at the Teatro Communale Bologna, Teatro Carlo Felice Genova, Opéra Lyon, La Scala Milano, Bayerische Staatsoper Munich and the Salzburg Festival, where he sang in Mozart’s “Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots”, “Bastien und Bastienne” and “Der Schauspieldirektor”, as well as at the Theater an der Wien in Josef Haydn’s “Orlando Paladino” under Nikolaus Harnonocourt.
During his studies in Salzburg he already managed to establish his name as a concert- and oratorio singer, in the lively Salzburg concert- and sacred music scene. He worked with high-profile conductors such as Howard Arman, Semyon Bychkov, Enoch zu Guttenberg, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Ton Koopman, Simon Rattle, Helmuth Rilling and Sebastian Weigle. With Michael Hofstetter and the NDR orchestra and choir, he recorded Handel’s La Resurezzione, with Christian Arming he will perform in Japan Bruckner’s Te Deum and with Martin Haselböck he tours in South America and the US.
In 2010, the “Hugo Wolf Jahr”, Bernhard Berchtold was invited to perform two Liederabende at the ORF- Radiokulturhaus, which are recorded and will be released as DVD. Already in 2002 as award winner “Liederkünstler der Saison”, he was invited by the Hugo Wolf- Akademie Stuttgart a few times of which one concert was recorded on CD and broadcasted by the German radio station SWR.
Bernhard Berchthold’s great reputation as an interpreter of Schubertlieder once again was emphasized by the recordings of the cycles Schwanengesang and Winterreise made by the West German Radio (WDR) at the Klavier-Festival Ruhr. These two cycles he also performed at the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg.