Karl Huml

The Australian bass Karl Huml studied singing at the Victorian College of the Arts in his home city of Melbourne. His first engagements were at the Sydney Opera House, where he appeared as Monk (Don Carlo), Don Basilio (Il barbiere di Siviglia) and in La traviata, Billy Budd, Roméo et Juliette and Rinaldo. As a winner of the German Operatic Award of the Opera Foundation Australia, he became a member of the opera studio of the Cologne Opera in 2000.

He subsequently moved to Theater Bremen, where he appeared in roles such as Ramfis (Aida), Sarastro (Die Zauberflöte), Colline (La bohème), Don Basilio, Ferrando (Il trovatore), Timur (Turandot), Hermit (Der Freischütz), Frère Laurent (Roméo et Juliette), Collatinus (The Rape of Lucretia), Theseus/Snug (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), Don Inigo Gomez (L’Heure espagnole) and the title role of Don Quichotte. From 2006 to 2012 he was a member of the ensemble of the Vienna Volksoper, where he sang roles including Colline, Sarastro, Zuniga (Carmen), Don Basilio, Sparafucile (Rigoletto) and Crespel (Les Contes d’Hoffmann).

In 2013 he made his debut at the Salzburg Festival in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Other guest appearances have included Sarastro at the Sydney Opera and the Seefestspiele Berlin, and Osmin (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), Fenicio (Ermione), Joe (Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny), Commendatore (Don Giovanni) and Candide at the Volkstheater Rostock. He has performed in Ullmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis in Biel, sung Sparafucile in Perth and Daland (Der fliegende Holländer) at London’s Barbican Centre, appeared in The Love for Three Oranges, Albert Herring and Faust at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, in Ella Milch Sheriff’s Baruchs Schweigen at the Stadttheater Fürth, in the world premiere of the youth opera Tschick at Theater Hagen and in Il trovatore at the Wiener Festwochen, sung Sarastro at the festival Opera på Skäret, and appeared in Werther, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Cendrillon, Haas’s Koma and, most recently, Rigoletto at the Stadttheater Klagenfurt. In 2023 he performed in Sciarrino’s Venere e Adone at the Hamburg State Opera and in Fabián Panisello’s Die Judith von Shimoda at the Bregenz Festival.

Karl Huml has worked with Neue Oper Wien since 2015 and has appeared there in productions including Shostakovich’s The Nose and the first Austrian performances of Krenek’s Pallas Athene weint and Eötvös’s Angels in America.