WEDNESDAY 12 MARCH 2025
A CONVERSATION WITH MIRKO ROSCHKOWSKI
At 7.00pm [AEDT]
Wednesday 12 March 2025
in a zoom from Germany
German tenor Mirko Roschkowski
$12 AUD
ABOUT MIRKO ROSCHKOWSKI
Mirko Roschkowski is a freelance German tenor with a wide repertoire between Tamino, Éléazar and Lohengrin. This year he will perform the role of Froh in Das Rheingold at Bayreuth, which he also performed in 2024.
His biography
I grew up in Dortmund, in a loving working-class family that had little contact with classical music. However, my grandparents loved to sing in the choir and it is said that they had very beautiful voices. My grandmother also sometimes sang solo in concerts or at weddings, but she had no singing training.
I owe my access to opera to my music teacher Lothar Trawny, who recognized my vocal talent in school and invited me to a singing lesson. Luckily for me, he was a tenor and gave me the impetus to work on my voice. It was like a sign of fate, because from then on I hardly wanted to concern myself with anything else. Through recordings I got to know the great tenors of the present and past, learned to love Wunderlich, Gedda, Domingo, Pavarotti, Kraus, Anders, Heppner and Bonisolli and trained my voice in private lessons with Lothar Trawny.
After graduating from high school, I went to study special education at the University of Cologne. If music hadn’t made such an impact on my life, education would definitely have remained my path and would have made me happy.
At the end of my studies, I dared to gain my first experience in the world of singing: I took part in the “Alexander Girardi” competition for opera and operetta, where I made it to the third round, after which I attended my first master classes with Deon van der Walt and Christoph Prégardien. Now I was hooked and had to try my hand at the stage. My first stage role: Gustl in “The Land of Smiles” in Solingen, then Ottokar (The Gypsy Baron) in Gummersbach and from there I went to the Detmold State Theater. Riding on a wave of luck, I got the chance to audition for a beginner’s contract in Bremerhaven, which I actually managed and where I found my place of work and training for three years. Artistic director Peter Grisebach entrusted me with the first major roles and my encounters with Mozart enabled me to pave my professional path for the next few years: Don Ottavio, Tamino, Idomeneo, Almaviva (Barber of Seville), Lindoro (Italian Girl in Algiers), then Faust, and Boris in “Katja Kabanova”, the first Alfred in “Die Fledermaus”, the first “Sänger” in “Der Rosenkavalier” etc… The impressions and encounters were overwhelming!
I attended master classes with Edda Moser, Raúl Giménez, Margreet Honig and Horst Laubenthal, but I learned the craft of opera singing primarily on stage and through self-study and with my musical partners.
I made the leap from Bremerhaven to the Deutsche Oper am Rhein; an important step towards numerous new roles at a high artistic level: Belmonte, Belfiore, Barinkay, Jaquino, Chateauneuf, Iopas and many more.
After another three years I went to the Bonn Opera and soon after to Cologne. Here I was able to further develop “my” Mozart and at the same time expand my affinity for French opera! With Titus I finally made it to ten Mozart roles and ventured into more dramatic realms with Don José (Carmen), Gérald (Lakmé) and the prince in “Rusalka” and “The Love for Three Oranges”. The highlights of this time were certainly Benvenuto Cellini, which I have since been able to sing at the Nuremberg State Theater, and Anatol Kuragin from Prokofiev’s “War and Peace”, a magical production by Nicolas Brieger at the Cologne Opera.
As a guest, I have performed in various theaters and in different roles – a lot of Mozart, of course: Belmonte at the Berlin State Opera and the Vienna Volksoper, Tamino at the Semperoper, Idomeneo at the Mannheim National Theater and the Wiesbaden State Theater, to name just a few, and in Schwetzingen the eleventh Mozart role: Mitridate! I have also performed as Lenski (Eugene Onegin), Max (Der Freischütz) and Lucio Silla in Stuttgart, as Belmonte in Graz, Boris (Katja Kabanova) in Wiesbaden, Faust in Leipzig, Prince (The Love for Three Oranges) and Don José (Carmen) at the Komische Oper Berlin, as Symon (Beggar Student) and Caramello (A Night in Venice) at the Mörbisch Lake Festival and as Hoffmann at the Volksoper and in Meiningen. As Lucio Silla, I even had the honor of a guest appearance at the famous Scala in Milan.
I have had the opportunity to work with numerous directors, with Konwitschny, Brieger, Loy, Doucet, Laufenberg, Hilsdorf, Freyer, Kerkhof, Scozzi, Höckmayer and Himmelmann and with conductors such as Ettinger, Minkowski, Blunier, Junghänel, Haider, Eschwé, Joel, Zilias, Stenz, Humburg, Prießnitz, Kaftan, Petrou and Dubrovsky. In addition, there are many pianists and répétiteurs whose work cannot be valued highly enough. I would just like to mention Ellen Rissinger, Gertraud Ottinger, Chris Arpin and Thorsten Fabrizi, with whom I have had a particularly long and intensive collaboration and friendship.
Irina Gavrilovici has been my singing teacher since 2012, and I use her to prepare myself for the many new challenges in terms of singing technique. Whether Bach, Verdi, Wagner or Massenet, she always has tips to help me overcome the hurdles of the roles.
In the 2018/19 season, I was able to make my debut as Lohengrin at the Bonn Theater, a career step that I had long planned and carefully prepared. Working with the director Marco Marelli and the conductor Dirk Kaftan turned out to be a great stroke of luck and marks a high point in my career so far. Another high point followed immediately with Nadja Loschky’s production of “Rusalka” at the Cologne Opera, in which I sang the role of the prince. An outstanding evening of theater!
The pandemic slowed me down and many projects fell victim to it. I particularly regret the cancellation of a Japan and China tour with the Beethoven Orchestra with the Ninth Symphony and my debut as Florestan – in the Beethoven year of 2020, of all times!
Since the 21/22 season I have been able to get going again, sang for the first time at the state theaters in Kassel, Augsburg and Karlsruhe, was a regular guest at the Dortmund Theater with great challenges, such as Éléazar in “La Juive” and Lohengrin, sang Énée in “Les Troyens” at the Berlioz Festival and at the Cologne Opera, Claudio in Wagner’s “Liebesverbot” at the Leipzig Opera, “Lohengrin” in Wiesbaden and was able to bring two fantastic specialities to the stage at the Bonn Theater: “Li Tai Pe” by Clemens von Franckenstein and “The Singing Devil” by Franz Schreker. These productions were overwhelming!
In the summer of 2024 a long-awaited dream came true: my debut at the Bayreuth Festival as “Froh” in Wagner’s “Rheingold” under the direction of Simone Young. I feel it is a special honor to be part of the singing family on the Green Hill!
It is precisely these encounters with artistic personalities, crazy, wild, lovable people, that make theater life so extraordinary. I enjoy the privilege of being part of it.