Performance Database

Franz Hawlata was born in Eichstätt. He studied musicology before enrolling in 1983 at the Munich Academy of Music, where his teachers included Ernst Haefliger, Hans Hotter and Erik Werba. He made his professional stage début at Munich's Theater am Gärtnerplatz in 1986, following this up with engagements in Munich, Coburg and at the Komische Oper in Berlin and beginning his international career in 1992 with guest appearances in Lyons, Pretoria, Cardiff and San Francisco. He joined the Vienna State Opera in 1994 and since then has given more than two hundred performances in roles that have included Ochs in Der Rosenkavalier, Orestes in Elektra, Sir Morosus in Die schweigsame Frau, Rocco in Fidelio, Caspar in Der Freischütz, Leporello in Don Giovanni, Sarastro and Papageno in Die Zauberflöte, Osmin in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Figaro in Le nozze di Figaro, the title role in Wozzeck, Daland in Der fliegende Holländer and Pogner in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. It was as Ochs that he made his acclaimed début at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in February 1995. The following October he appeared for the first time at the Opéra Bastille in Paris in Kurt Weill's Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, while in November 1996 he delighted audiences and critics alike as Leporello at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden. Guest appearances have additionally taken Franz Hawlata to Munich, Berlin, Essen, Brussels, Barcelona, Florence, Turin, Genoa, Chicago, San Diego and Tokyo. In the spring of 2001 he sang his first Wotan at the State Theatre in Meiningen in Christine Mielitz's controversial production, following this up in 2003 with his first Hans Sachs in Essen, a role he went on to sing under the direction of Zubin Mehta at the Teatro Maggio Musicale in Florence in 2004. That same year he sang his first Barak in Die Frau ohne Schatten in Chicago, a role he repeated in Paris in January and February 2008. Franz Hawlata sang Osmin at the 1997 and 1998 Salzburg Festivals, returning to the town as Leporello in 1999, as Don Alfonso in Così fan tutte in 2000 and 2001 and as Ochs in 2004, the year in which he returned to Essen as Wotan.