Performance Database

Robert Dean Smith was born in Kansas, USA, and studied singing with Margaret Thuenemann at Pittsburg State University and subsequently with Daniel Ferro at the Juilliard School in New York. At the same time he studied saxophone and played in various classical and jazz ensembles. His first professional engagement was in Bielefeld, Germany, and like many heldentenors, he began his career as a baritone before changing to tenor. His international breakthrough was at the Bayreuth Festival 1997 as Walther von Stolzing in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. He has also sung Lohengrin, Siegmund in Die Walküre, und since 2005 Tristan at the Festival. As soloist in Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, Robert Dean Smith had the special honor of performing at the 125th anniversary of the Bayreuth Festival.

He performs regularly in the leading opera houses and concert halls of Vienna, Munich, New York, Berlin, Milan, Paris, London, Madrid and Tokyo, working with renowned conductors Zubin Mehta, Antonio Pappano, James Levine, Christian Thielemann, Riccardo Muti, Daniel Barenboim, Lorin Maazel, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Pierre Boulez, Christoph von Dohnányi, Bernard Haitink, Daniele Gatti, Fabio Luisi  and Kent Nagano.

His repertoire includes Wagner’s Parsifal, Tannhäuser, and Erik; Verdi’s La forza del destino (Alvaro) and Don Carlo; Puccini’s Tosca (Cavaradossi), Madama Butterfly (Pinkerton) and Manon Lescaut (des Griuex); Giordano’s Andrea Chénier (Chénier); also Carmen (Don José) by Bizet, Fidelio (Florestan) by Beethoven, Ariadne auf Naxos (Bacchus) and Die Frau ohne Schatten (Kaiser) by R. Strauss, and Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades (Ghermann). His solo CD of Wagner arias and scenes was awarded the Orphée d’Or from the Académie du Disque Lyrique.