Nils Wanderer

The countertenor Nils Wanderer studied singing at the University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar. Since September 2019 he has been a student on the opera course of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. As a winner of one of the Barbican Centre’s Young Artist Awards, he has received a full bursary for his studies, and regularly performs in Barbican concerts with the London Symphony Orchestra and the London Symphony Chorus. He has profited from masterclasses with Vivica Genaux, Emma Kirkby, Karina Gauvin, Patricia Pace, Karl-Peter Kammerlander and Axel Köhler. He has a long-term working partnership with the male alto Matthias Rexroth, an important vocal mentor.

As a soloist Nils Wanderer regularly appears with ensembles such as lautten compagney BERLIN, the Karlsruhe Baroque Orchestra, La Sfera Armoniosa, the Staatskapelle Weimar and the Jenaer Philharmonie, and has performed at prestigious theatres such as the Teatro Massimo di Palermo, the Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar, the Nederlandse Reisopera, the Staatsschauspiel Dresden and Theater Bonn, and at festivals such as the Festival de Música Antigua de Sevilla, the Klosterkonzerte Maulbronn, the Festival Périgord Noir and the KlassikSommer in Hamm. Nils Wanderer has also appeared at the Philharmonie de Paris, L’Auditori in Barcelona, the Chapelle Royale de Versailles, the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, the Wigmore Hall and the Barbican Centre in London, under the direction of conductors such as Jordi Savall, Kent Nagano, Andreas Spering, Jürgen Budday and Simon Harley.

His wide-ranging repertoire includes opera roles such as the Sorceress and the Spirit in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Prince Orlofsky in Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus, the title role in Handel’s Rinaldo, Baba the Turk in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, First Angel / The Boy in Benjamin’s Written on Skin and Oberon in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and also solo parts in Handel’s Messiah, Belshazzar, Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno and Dixit Dominus, Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater and Nisi Dominus, Orff’s Carmina Burana, Bach’s B Minor Mass, Magnificat, St Matthew Passion, St John Passion, Christmas Oratorio and cantatas, and Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms. He has sung Schumann’s Liederkreis op. 39, Schubert’s Winterreise, Elgar’s Sea Pictures, Debussy’s Fêtes galantes and Lieder by Quilter, Barber, Wolf and Richard Strauss in song recitals with Thomas Steinhöfel, Graham Johnson and Iain Burnside.

In recent years several works have been written for the countertenor, which he and his ensemble Counterwerk have premiered at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden and the Wigmore Hall among other venues. Alongside his singing career Nils Wanderer works as an actor and choreographer and is the artistic director of the Baroque ensemble MERIDIES.