Oliver Zwarg - Sångare - Basbaryton/Bas
Oliver Zwarg’s active operatic repertoire includes such roles as: Strauss‘ Barak, Jochanaan and Orest, Wagner’s Amfortas, Dutchman, Kurwenal, Alberich and notably Hans Sachs, Berg’s Wozzeck, Mozart‘s Figaro, Leporello and Papageno, Verdi’s Amonasro, Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and Scarpia and Debussy’s Golaud, which in 2007 brought him multiple nominations for the German magazine Opernwelt’s Artist of the Year. Recently he also added Wotan, Wanderer and Iago to his extensive list of roles.
When he starred in Franz Schreker’s rarely performed Der Schmied von Gent in 2010 at Chemnitz, the Frankfurter Rundschau praised the way “he steered with unstrained precision through the huge title role”, while Opernwelt found that “with his robust, beautiful baritone he is a kind of German Bryn Terfel”. The recording of the production appeared at CPO.
In the current season he sings, among others: Magic Flute at ROH Covent Garden, Dr. Schön/Jack the Ripper at Theater Darmstadt, Wanderer (Siegfried) and returns to Mozart as Don Alfonso (Cosi fan tutte).
Having trained in Stuttgart, Bremen-born Zwarg enjoys a close relationship with the city’s opera house and, within Germany, he is also a regular visitor to the opera houses of Cologne (where he had an outstanding success as Alberich, a role he repeated when the company visited the Shanghai Expo is 2010), Berlin (Staatsoper unter den Linden and Komische Oper), Dresden, Munich, Hamburg, Darmstadt and Chemnitz. Internationally, he has appeared at the opera houses of Barcelona, Madrid, Copenhagen, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Lille and Liège, and at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, while his festival dates have included Salzburg (Easter and Summer festivals), Lucerne, Edinburgh, Ludwigsburg and the Wiener Festwochen.
Beyond his operatic roles, Zwarg commands a concert repertoire that extends from the renaissance to the contemporary music of today.
Oliver Zwarg performs with conductors such as Sir Simon Rattle, Christian Thielemann, Daniele Gatti, Marco Armiliato, Lothar Zagrosek, Ingo Metzmacher, Markus Stenz and Paul McCreesh and works with stage directors such as Calixto Bieito, Claus Guth, Michael Hampe, Stefan Herheim, Peter Konwitschny, Nikolaus Lehnhoff, Robert Carsen, Achim Freyer and Jossi Wieler.