Rolando Villazón

Thanks to his captivating performances in the most prestigious opera houses and concert halls, Rolando Villazón has established himself as one of today’s leading tenors and is also now regarded as one of the world’s most versatile artists, active not only as a singer but also as a director, writer and television personality. He has been artistic director of the Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation since 2021 and the intendant of Salzburg’s Mozartwoche Festival since 2019.

He appears regularly at the Berlin, Munich and Vienna State Operas, at La Scala, Milan, at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and at the Salzburg Festival, where he made his debut as Alfredo (La traviata) in 2005. He works with the world’s leading orchestras and conductors and has given concerts at London’s Barbican Centre, the Paris, Berlin and Cologne Philharmonies, the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, New York’s Carnegie Hall and elsewhere.

In 2011 Rolando Villazón made his debut as a director with Werther at the Opéra de Lyon. Since then, he has directed productions at the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, the Vienna Volksoper, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris and the Semperoper Dresden. In 2022 he staged a much-praised production of Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Salzburg Festival; this production was also performed by the Opéra de Monte-Carlo in April 2023.

In the 2023/24 season his appearances include the title role in Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo at the Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival, Loge (Das Rheingold) under Philippe Jordan at the Berlin State Opera and Alessandro in a concert performance of Mozart’s Il re pastore with L’Arpeggiata under Christina Pluhar at Müpa in Budapest. In May 2024 he sings Orfeo at the Semperoper Dresden and returns to the Vienna State Opera for the gala concert Farinelli & Friends with Cecilia Bartoli.

Rolando Villazón has been a Deutsche Grammophon exclusive artist since 2007 and has to date sold more than two million albums and released more than twenty CDs and DVDs, many of which have won awards. In France he has received the title of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He is an ambassador of Red Noses Clowndoctors International and a member of the Collège de ’Pataphysique in Paris. He has published three novels: Malabares (2013), Lebenskünstler (2017) and Amadeus auf dem Fahrrad (2020), which spent several weeks at the top of Der Spiegel’s list of bestselling books. Rolando Villazón has also hosted radio and television programmes for Arte TV, Radio Classique in France and Klassik Radio in Germany. In 2017 he was appointed Mozart Ambassador of the International Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg.