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The German bass, Reinhard Hagen, quickly becoming a regular guest artist at several of Europe's leading opera houses and with many prominent orchestras. He studied singing at the college of Music in Karlsruhe with Professor Erika Margraf and Professor Aldo Baldin and also took private lessons from Harald Stamm.
Since 1985 Reinhard Hagen has had regular concert engagements. Numerous tours have taken him, among other places, to Southern Europe, Israel and Brazil. In early 1988 he gave a guest performance as Sarastro in Mozart’s Magic Flute with the Junge Kammeroper in Vienna. In 1988 he was a prize-winner at the VDMK singing contest in Berlin, in 1988 winner of the Mendelssohn contest of ‘Stiftung Preussischen Kulturbesitz’ in Berlin. His greatest success as scholarship holder of the ‘Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes’ was at the International Music Contest in Geneva. He won not only the grand prize for opera interpretation but also both special prize for the best presentation of a Mozart aria (Mozart prize) and the best rendering of a Swiss Composition (Swiss prize).
Following his studies and the prizes he won, Reinhard Hagen began his professional career in Dortmund. Since 1994, he has been a regular member of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, where he has appeared in such roles as Titurel in Parsifal, the Commendatore in Don Giovanni, Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte, Pogner in Die Meistersinger, Gremin in Eugene Onegin, Ramfis in Aida, and the Watchman in Enescu's Oedipe. He made his 1998 USA debut with San Francisco Opera in Don Carlo, returned to sing the roles of Fasolt and Hunding during our 1999 Ring Festival, and was seen earlier this season as Raimondo in Lucia di Lammermoor. Elsewhere, Hagen has performed at, among others, the Aix-en-Provence Festival, Hamburg State Opera and Munich State Opera (Zauberflöte), in Seville (the Landgraf in Tannhäuser), Geneva (Friar Laurence in Roméo et Juliette), and Venice (his first Rocco in Fidelio).
Equally at home on the concert platform, Reinhard Hagen has appeared with the Bavarian Radio Symphony under Lorin Maazel, Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig led by Herbert Blomstedt and Marek Janowski, the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by James Levine, and he recently completed a European concert tour led by Neville Marriner. Works he has performed include L.v. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and Missa Solemnis, Dmitri Shostakovich's Fourteenth Symphony, and Haydn's Creation. Recent engagements (2000) include his San Diego Opera debut as Heinrich in a new production of Lohengrin, as well as Tannhäuser, Fidelio, Aida, Don Giovanni and Macbeth in Berlin.
Reinhard Hagen also made recordings and television productions with distinguished conductors. |
