Julian Prégardien
Born in Frankfurt in 1984, Julian Prégardien received his first musical training as a member of the choirs in Limburg Cathedral. After having studied voice in Freiburg and at the Aix-en-Provence Opera Festival Academy, he was a member of the soloist ensemble of Frankfurt Opera from 2009 to 2013. In parallel, he pursued a remarkable solo career, and has now become one of the outstanding young vocalists on the international scene.
As an opera singer he has made guest appearances at Aix-en-Provence Festival, in Hamburg, in Munich, and at the Opéra Comique in Paris. In 2018 he gave his début performance as Narraboth in Richard Strauss’s Salome, staged by Romeo Castellucci, with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Franz Welser-Möst. In 2019 he gave his first performance as Tamino at Berlin State Opera under the baton of Alondra de la Parra.
In the 2018/2019 season he concertized with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, Hamburg State Philharmonic Orchestra, Munich RSO, the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, and the Bavarian Radio Choir. He was selected as “Artiste Étoile” by the Mozart Festival in Würzburg, where he performed with Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and with the Bamberg Symphony. In the 2019/2020 season he will make his début appearance with Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Franz Welser-Möst in Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang. For the Advent and Lent seasons he will go on anniversary tour with the Collegium Vocale Ghent (including the St Matthew Passion at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan), he will give a vocal recital of Mozart arias at the Cologne Philharmonie, and a series of concerts with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France.
In his career, Prégardien lays particular emphasis on Lied recitals and chamber music projects. In the 2019/2020 season he will perform Die schöne Müllerin with Kristian Bezuidenhout, Winterreise with Lars Vogt, Schwanengesang with Martin Helmchen, and Dichterliebe with Eric le Sage. With Sir András Schiff at the piano he will sing Brahms’s Liebesliederwalzer in Vicenza, and Schumann’s Spanisches Liederspiel at the Schubertiade in Schwarzenberg.
His recordings, since 2018 exclusively for the Alpha Classics label, have been awarded the ICMA Vocal Award, the “Vierteljahrespreis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik” and the Premio Abbiati del Disco.