A talk with tenor Mirko Roschkowski via zoom

GERMAN TENOR MIRKO ROSCHKOWSKI WILL CHAT WITH THE SOCIETY'S  ROSS WHITELAW ABOUT HIS CAREER 

Mirko Roschkowski is a freelance German tenor with a wide repertoire between Tamino, Éléazar and Lohengrin. This year he will perform the role of Froh in Das Rheingold at Bayreuth, which he also performed in 2024.

Mirko grew up in Dortmund, Germany and had little contact with classical music. 

His early music teacher Lothar Trawny, recognized my vocal talent in school and invited him to a singing lesson. He was a tenor and gave Mirko the impetus to work on his voice. Through recordings he got to know the great tenors of the present and past, learned to love Wunderlich, Gedda, Domingo, Pavarotti, Kraus, Anders, Heppner and Bonisolli and trained my voice in private lessons with Herr Trawny.

He has attended master classes with Edda Moser, Raúl Giménez, Margreet Honig and Horst Laubenthal, but really learned the craft of opera singing primarily on stage and through self-study and with my musical partners.

As a guest, Mirko has performed in various theaters and in different roles – a lot of Mozart: Belmonte at the Berlin State Opera and the Vienna Volksoper, Tamino at the Semperoper, Idomeneo at the Mannheim National Theater and the Wiesbaden State Theater, to name just a few, and in Schwetzingen the eleventh Mozart role: Mitridate! He has also performed as Lenski (Eugene Onegin), Max (Der Freischütz) and Lucio Silla in Stuttgart, as Belmonte in Graz, Boris (Katja Kabanova) in Wiesbaden, Faust in Leipzig, Prince (The Love for Three Oranges) and Don José (Carmen) at the Komische Oper Berlin, as Symon (Beggar Student) and Caramello (A Night in Venice) at the Mörbisch Lake Festival and as Hoffmann at the Volksoper and in Meiningen. As Lucio Silla, he had the honor of a guest appearance at the famous La Scala in Milano.

Mirko has worked with numerous directors, with Konwitschny, Brieger, Loy, Doucet, Laufenberg, Hilsdorf, Freyer, Kerkhof, Scozzi, Höckmayer and Himmelmann and with conductors such as Ettinger, Minkowski, Blunier, Junghänel, Haider, Eschwé, Joel, Zilias, Stenz, Humburg, Prießnitz, Kaftan, Petrou and Dubrovsky. In addition, there are many pianists and répétiteurs whose work cannot be valued highly enough.

Irina Gavrilovici has been Mirko's singing teacher since 2012, and helps him prepare for the many new challenges in terms of singing technique. 

In the 2018/19 season, I was able to make my debut as Lohengrin at the Bonn Theater, a career step that was long in the making. Working with the director Marco Marelli and the conductor Dirk Kaftan marked a high point in his career so far. 

In the summer of 2024 a long-awaited dream came true: Mirko's debut at the Bayreuth Festival as “Froh” in Wagner’s “Rheingold” under the direction of Simone Young. He feels it is a special honor to be part of the singing family on the Green Hill!

It is precisely these encounters with artistic personalities, crazy, wild, lovable people, that make theater life so extraordinary. And Mirko is the first to admit how much he enjoys the privilege of being part of it !

IMPORTANT NOTE

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