Christoph Strehl

German tenor Christoph Strehl was born in Lübeck and studied with Soto Papulkas at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen. He has also been taught privately by Silvana Bazzoni Bartoli and has attended masterclasses with Norman Shetler, Josef Metternich and Gianni Raimondi, among others. He won the Alexander Girardi International Singing Competition in 1999.

Christoph Strehl’s repertoire encompasses Mozart’s principal tenor roles as well as works by Britten, Handel, Rameau, Schubert, Strauss, Tchaikovsky and Wagner. He joined the Zurich Opera in 2002 and made his Salzburg Festival debut as Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni) under Nikolaus Harnoncourt in 2003. Since then his international career as a Mozart specialist has taken him to Amsterdam, Barcelona, London, Baden-Baden, Geneva, Hamburg, Madrid, Munich, Paris, the Vienna State Opera, the Metropolitan Opera and the Aix-en-Provence and Lucerne Festivals.

As a member of the Dortmund Opera from 2011 to 2015 Christoph Strehl systematically extended his repertoire to include roles such as Eliogabalo in Cavalli’s opera of the same name, Rodolfo (La bohème), Orsino in Goldschmidt’s Beatrice Cenci, Shuisky (Boris Godunov) and Nerone (L’incoronazione di Poppea). In February 2016 he made his role debut as Pollione alongside Cecilia Bartoli’s Norma at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo and in June 2016 he sang his first Eisenstein (Die Fledermaus) at the Teatro Verdi in Trieste. In 2017 he sang the Earl of Orkney in concert performances of Peter Maxwell Davies’s The Hogboon at the Luxembourg Philharmonie and Froh (Das Rheingold) under Ádám Fischer in Budapest. In 2018 he was heard as Oronte (Alcina) at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris and in February 2019 he sang Froh at the Grand Théâtre de Genève. Plans for 2020 include Don Ottavio at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein.

In addition to his operatic engagements Christoph Strehl has given lieder recitals with Helmut Deutsch at the Schubertiade and elsewhere. Concerts have taken him to the Musikverein and Konzerthaus in Vienna, the Gasteig and the Herkulessaal in Munich, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Berlin Philharmonie and Severance Hall in Cleveland.

Numerous CDs and DVDs document Christoph Strehl’s work as a singer. They include Die Zauberflöte under Abbado and Harnoncourt, Die Entführung aus dem Serail under Bolton, Fierrabras under Welser-Möst and La finta giardiniera under Harnoncourt.

Christoph Strehl is a professor of singing at the Salzburg Mozarteum.