Portrait Benjamin Bruns

Benjamin Bruns

Tenor
© Sara Schoengen
General Management

Benjamin Bruns began his singing career as an alto soloist with the boys’ choir in his hometown Hanover. After four years of private singing lessons with Prof. Peter Sefcik, he began his studies at the Academy of Music and Theatre in Hamburg with Kammersängerin Renate Behle. Whilst still a student he was offered his first permanent engagement at Theater Bremen which allowed him to build up a wide ranging repertoire at an early stage. This was soon followed by an ensemble contract at the Cologne Opera, and he later continued his professional journey at the Semperoper Dresden before joining the ensemble of the Vienna State Opera, where he remained until July 2020.

His musical range includes Mozart roles such as Belmonte (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), Tamino (Die Zauberflöte) and Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni) but also important other repertoire such as Fenton (Falstaff), Camille de Rosillon (Die lustige Witwe), Lysander (Britten: A Midsummer Night's Dream), Don Ramiro (La Cenerentola), Boris Grigorievič (Janáček: Kátia Kabanová), or the Italian Tenor in the two Strauss operas Capriccio and Der Rosenkavalier. With Wagner roles such as Lohengrin, Loge (Das Rheingold) and Erik (Der fliegende Holländer), or Max in Der Freischütz and the Matteo in Strauss' Arabella, the expansion into the youthful dramatic field is becoming apparent. In spring 2020, he appeared for the first time on the stage of the Vienna State Opera as Florestan in Beethoven's Fidelio.

At the start of the 2022/2023 season, Benjamin Bruns will make a guest appearance as Erik in a new production of Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer at the Hamburg State Opera. In Munich he will be heard as Guido Bardi in Zemlinsky's Eine florentinische Tragödie together with the BR Radio Orchestra. At the Zurich Opera House he will appear again as Max in Freischütz, and in a concert performance of Act 1 of Wagner's Walküre in Wuppertal he will sing Siegmund for the first time.

Oratorio and recitals form an equally important side to Benjamin Bruns’ career. At the heart of his extensive concert repertoire are the great sacred works by Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and Mendelssohn. He has sung with many renowned ensembles including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Bach Collegium Japan, the WDR Symphony Orchestra, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, as well as the choir and orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome.

The 2022/23 season also holds interesting projects and shows the full range of Benjamin Brun's repertoire: Hans Huber's Weissagung und Erfüllung in Basel, Lloyd Webber's Requiem in Munich, Beethoven's 9th Symphony in Tokyo as well as in Paris, Antwerp and Hamburg, van Gilse's Circle of Life in Utrecht, Mahler's 8th Symphony in Leipzig and Mozart's Requiem in Bilbao. In a tour of the Netherlands, he performs Bach's St Matthew Passion in concerts in Eindhoven, Groningen, Rotterdam, Utrecht and Naarden, among others.

Benjamin Bruns is a prize winner of the Bundeswettbewerb Gesang in Berlin, the Mozart Competition in Hamburg and the International Singing Competition of the Schloss Rheinsberg Chamber Opera. He was also the recipient of the 2008 Kurt Hübner Prize awarded by the Theater Bremen and the 2009 Young Musicians’ Prize awarded by the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival.

His Lied CD "Dichterliebe" with Schumann's Dichterliebe and Der arme Peter, Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte and Hugo Wolf's Liederstrauß (accompanied by: Karola Theill) was highly praised by the press and nominated at the International Classical Music Awards as well as for the German Record Prize in the category 'Vocal Recital'. His most recent CD, Schubert's Winterreise, accompanied by Karola Theill, was released in spring 2021.

For more information, please visit the artist's website: www.benjaminbruns.de




15. June 2023 - 20:00

München, Herz-Jesu-Kirche

Andrew Lloyd Webber: Requiem

Info & Tickets



28. June 2023 - 19:00

Zürich, Opernhaus Zürich

Carl Maria von Weber: Der Freischütz op. 77

Info & Tickets



1. July 2023 - 19:00

Zürich, Opernhaus Zürich

Carl Maria von Weber: Der Freischütz op. 77

Info & Tickets



  • "Singen können sie beide wunderbar, (...) Ersteren singt Benjamin Bruns, zurzeit wohl einer der besten Max- Interpreten, die uns zur Verfügung stehen, mit jener romantischen Inbrunst, die ihm Weber ind die Kehle schrieb (...)."
    Opernwelt
    Jürgen Otten, "Fahrstuhl zu Fagott, Webers Freischütz in Amsterdam", in: Opernwelt, Ausgabe 7, 2022
  • "Benjamin Bruns, ein regelrechter Verwandlungskünstler zwischen tenoraler Butter-Lyrik und stählerner Attacke, überzeugt nicht zuletzt mit Lehárs "Freunde, das Leben ist lebenswert!"
  • "Herausragend freilich ist die Leistung des knapp 40 Jahre alten Hannoveraners Benjamin Bruns, der als Evangelist mühelos und Übertreibungen die Affekte dem Zuhörer zu vermitteln weiß. Das ist souverän und geht unter die Haut!"
    Machmagazin der neuen Bachgesellschaft
    Reinmar Emans, CD-Kritik Matthäus Passion mit Masaaki Suzuki, "Mit viel Wärme", in: Machmagazin der neuen Bachgesellschaft, 18.11.2020



Elisabeth Ehlers

Elisabeth Ehlers

Director, General Management
e-mail
+49 89 44488790
Katharina Klapsing

Katharina Klapsing

e-mail
Associate Artist Manager
+49 89 444887910