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The Swiss baritone, Claudio Danuser, was born into a Grisonian family in Basel and raised in Berne and Calcutta. He studied musicology and school music II (diploma HLA 1985) at the University of Berne (professor Kunze), singing at the conservatory in Lausanne (teacher's diploma under the tutelage of Juliette Bise 1984) and then in Italy (opera class Conservatorio di Pescara, Italian singing diploma 1986).
Claudio Danuser made his opera-singing debut in the summer of 1996 with Georges Bizet's Don Procopio at the Montepulciano Festival (recorded by Bongiovanni, Bologna). He was a member of the International Opera Studio at the Zürich Opera House during the season 1987-1988. He has since performed as a guest at the opera houses and city theatres of Genoa, Nantes, Geneva, Zürich, Berne and Biel, and at such festivals as 'Zürcher Junifestwochen', Avenches Opera Festival, Menuhin Festival/Alpengala Gstaad, Bad Hersfeld Opera Festival, Riva del Garda and Macerata. In addition he toured England, Germany and numerous Eastern European countries and Israel with the Viennese Opera Theatre and the Opera Factory Zürich. Included in the major opera rolls he has personified upon the stage are Don Giovanni (Mozart), Don Quichotte (Massenet), Nabucco (Verdi), Ford in Verdi's Falstaff and the four baritone roles in Offenbach's Hoffmanns Erzählungen.
Besides his love of Italian and French opera Claudio Danuser also engages himself enthusiastically with the musical works of our time and has, until present, world premiered seven works including the Rhaeto-Romanic opera Il semiader by G.A. Derungs (Chur 1996), Rudolf Kelterborn's opera Julia (Zürich 1991) and the jazz/classic opera William Turner in Uri from the English bandleader Mike Westbrook (Festival Alpentöne/Theaterspektakel Zürich 2003, recorded for television by SF DRS). In 1989 he sang György Kurtág's Pilinsky-Lieder under the direction of the composer at the Barbican Center in London and Aribert Reimann's Michelangelo-Monologe under the direction of the composer at the Davos Festival in 1992. In 1997 he was cast by Zürich Opera House for the baritone role of Ligeti's mimodrama Aventures/Nouvelles Aventures, choreographed by Heinz Spoerli.
Claudio Danuser also performed often as a concert singer including in J.S. Bach's Mass in B minor (BWV 232) under the direction of Yehudi Menuhin in Lille (France), Mozart's Requiem in the Parisian Notre Dame and as a soloist with the St. Petersberg Symphony in
Johannes Brahms' Deutsche Requiem.
Claudio Danuser has performed for diverse CD and Radio recordings in Italy (RAI), France and Switzerland (DRS). He was engaged by Berne City Theatre during the seasons from 1998 until 2003 where he sang the roles of Albert in Massenet's Werther and the falcon in Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus. He additionally performed as a guest and for the first time in 2000 in the USA (Honolulu/Hawaii), and in August 2001 for the first time with Nello Santi in a series of Verdi gala concerts at, amongst other places, the Tonhalle in Zürich. Moralez in 'Fernand Cortez' from Spontini in Paris (Invalidendom). 2002: Canada debut with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, Gossec's Le Triomphe de la République at RSI in Lugano.
Special emphasis in the repertoire of Claudio Danuser is given to a four-language Lieder recital with works by Swiss composers from all language areas which he has performed as a guest in Honolulu, South Africa, Berlin/Brandenburg, in Mongolia and in China and Japan (2005).
In the summer of 2002 Claudio Danuser founded the ensemble Ils Trais Baritons Grischuns together with two Grisonian baritone friends Gion Jäger and Claudio Simonet (accompanied on the piano by Risch Biert), which is predominantly occupied with the Lieder collection of Grison (mostly Rhaeto-Romanic and Grison-Italian).
Claudio Danuser is also active in the fields of musicology and publishing and supervises the 'Musiques Suisses' CD label of the Migros Cultural Foundation, which specializes in music from Switzerland. |
