The Swiss baritone, Niklaus Kost, studied at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam with Valerie Guillorit where in 2007 he received his Bachelor of Music degree with distinction. In the 2007-2008 season he was a member of both De Nieuwe Opera Academie and the Resident Artist Program (RAP) of the Nationale Reisopera. In addition, he attended the International Masterliedclass under the direction of Udo Reinemann, to further study the Lied repertoire and the interpretation of the contemporary repertoire in his Master's thesis. He also attended master-classes with Rudolf Jansen, Roger Vignoles, Françoise Pollet, Konrad Richter, Julius Drake, Lynne Dawson and José van Dam. Today he is coached by Margreet Honig. He received the Swiss "Studienpreis Gesang des Migros-Kulturprozents" in 2007.
His oratorio repertoire reaches from the Christ parties in J.S. Bach's Passions over W.A. Mozart, Johannes Brahms, Gabriel Fauré, Bruckner, Puccini and Maurice Duruflé to contemporary oratorios. As a Lieder singer he could be heard at Festivals in Russia, Italy and Switzerland.
In recent years he performed the roles of Theseus in Benjamin Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream, Antonio in W.A. Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, Escamillo in La tragédie de Carmen, Marquis de la Force in Francis Poulenc's Les Dialogues des Carmélites, Agamemnon in Gluck's Iphigénie and Aulide, Métayer in Arthur Honegger's Les aventures du Roi Pausole, the Monster in the Witches of Venice by Philip Glass and Ogro in Montsalvatge's El Gato con Botas. He has worked with conductors such as Ed Spanjaard, Jan Willem de Vriend, Hartmut Haenchen, Henrik Schaefer and Gijs Leenaars. This season he can be seen in the role of "Forelle Stanley" in the opera of the same name by the Swiss composer Daniel Fueter. |