BIOGRAPHY

German baritone Günter Papendell began his musical education as a chorister at the Cathedral of Augsburg, before completing his studies at the University for Music and Dance in Cologne and the University of Music and Theatre in Munich.

After three years at the Musiktheater im Revier Gelsenkirchen, he was engaged in 2007 by the Komische Oper Berlin and has been a member of the company ever since.

Günter Papendell has made numerous guest appearances at the Bayerische Staatsoper, at the Semperoper Dresden, the Aalto-Theater Essen, in Nuremberg, Weimar, Bonn, Bremen, Mannheim, Vienna and Basel, among other places, as well as at the Edinburgh Festival.

Renowned for his great versatility as a singer-actor, his repertoire includes the title roles in Don Giovanni, Eugene Onegin, Der Fliegende Holländer, Gianni Schicchi, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, Figaro in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Golaud in Pelléas and Mélisande, Jason in Aribert Reimanns Medea, Kovalyov in The Nose, Germont in La Traviata, Ford in Falstaff, Rodrigo in Don Carlos, Paolo in Simone Boccanegra, Marcello in La Bohème, Sharpless in Madam Butterfly, Figaro and Count Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro, Guglielmo and Don Alfonso in Così fan tutte, Papageno in Die Zauberflöte, the Forester in The Cunning Little Vixen, Achilla in Giulio Cesare in Egitto, Escamillo in Carmen, Frank/Fritz in Die Tote Stadt, Pollux in Castor et Pollux, Mary in Die Soldaten, Orest in Elektra, Robert Storch in Intermezzo, Yeletski in Pique Dame, and Thomas Hauser in Les Bienveillantes by Héctor Parra, a role he created for the world premiere directed by Calixto Bieito at the Opera Ballet Vlaanderen in Antwerp.

Recent highlights include his celebrated performance of Pentheus in Barrie Kosky's internationally acclaimed production of The Bassarids under Vladimir Jurowski, his role debut at the Bayerische Staatsoper as the Hoopoe in Braunfels' rarely performed opera The Birds and most recently his critically acclaimed performance of Jean-Charles in Tobias Kratzer’s monumental staging of Henze's The Raft of the Medusa, under the baton of Titus Engel.

In 2022 Papendell received the honorary title of Berliner Kammersänger for his services to opera and music theatre.

The upcoming season will see his return to Basel, where he will sing Gunther in a new Ring Cycle directed by Benedikt von Peter, and a highly anticipated return to his signature role of Don Giovanni, this time under James Gaffigan in a new production by Kirill Serebrennikov.