Malte Roesner

German-American bass, Malte Roesner, was born in New York in 1979. His musical interest developed early in life, when he began violin lessons at the age of five. As a member of the Hanover Boy’s Choir in Germany, he was able to make his first solo appearances as a vocalist, both in concert and on the operatic stage. Malte Roesner studied at the University of Hamburg and at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media; majoring both in musicology and in opera performance. He furthered his vocal education with Prof. Irwin Gage’s lied-class, Bruno Pola’s master-class in Lugano (Switzerland) and with KS Carlos Álvarez in Sevilla (Spain). Today, he works with Paulette Vineyard-Herbig in Vienna (Austria). In 2016 he transitioned to bass repertoire after having sung as a baritone.

Mr. Roesner, an alumnus of the German National Academic Foundation, was the recipient of the Richard-Wagner-Foundation scholarship twice, in 2012 for his portrayal of Friedrich in the early Wagner opera Das Liebesverbot and again in 2014.

In the summer of 2017 he gave his critically acclaimed North-American debut. He sang both a song recital and the role of Doristo in Vicente Martin y Soler’s L’arbore di Diana with West Edge Opera in the San Francisco Bay Area. In December of 2017 he returns to San Francisco for another song recital at the Legion of Honor produced by Opera Parallèle.

From 2005 to 2015, he was a member of the ensemble at the Brunswick National Theater in Germany, where he has portrayed more than fifty roles. In addition to most of the important Mozart roles his operatic repertoire as a baritone included: Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor, Belcore in L’elisir d’amore, Ping in Turandot, Schaunard in La Bohème and Sharpless in Madama Butterfly, Dr. Falke in Die Fledermaus, Paolo in Simone Boccanegra, Heerrufer in Lohengrin, Nick Shadow in The Rake’s Progress and Masaniello in the German premiere of A. Carlos Gomes’ Salvator Rosa. Prior to singing Ford in Verdi’s Falstaff at the Brunswick National Theater, he had already embodied the role with striking success at the Castle Festival Wernigerode in 2006. Further festival appearences included an engagement as Escamillo in Carmen in Stuttgart, Germany. In the fall of 2011 he portrayed Ottokar in Weber’s Freischütz at the Schleswig-Holstein State Theater in Rendsburg and in the summer of 2012 Friedrich in Wagner’s Das Liebesverbot at the South-Thuringian National Opera in Meinigen, Germany; both roles which he had previously sung in Brunswick.

In the world premiere of the operatic version of Schnitzler’s Traumnovelle by Alex Nowitz he sang the male lead Fridolin and in the opening production for the 14th Munich Biennale for New Music Theater he sang the role of Marco Polo in Marco Nikodijevic’s opera Vivier. Ein Nachtprotokoll.

In the productions of Jake Heggie’s For a Look or a Touch (Manfred) and Jonathan Dove’s Mansfield Park (Edmund Bertram) Mr. Roesner was not only involved as the male lead, but he also wrote the German translations. The German Version of Mansfield Park is currently awaiting publication at Edition Peters.

His portrayal of Joe Gillis in the musical Sunset Boulevard, his first major musical role, was highly critically acclaimed in the specialized German press.

Mr. Roesner’s lied and art-song repetoire span the works of Süßmayr, Wolf and Haydn to those of Zemlinsky, Mahler and Rihm. In the ballet Schattengänger at the Brunswick National Theater, he appeared as a vocal soloist performing Schumann’s Liederkreis op. 39, Dichterliebe and Kerner-Songs.

In concert, Mr. Roesner has performed e.g. the Christmas Oratorios by Bach and Graun in Bad Königshofen, the Musikalischen Exequien and the St. John’s Passion by Schütz in Hanover, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and A Survivor from Warsaw by Schönberg in the Brunswick Cathedral, the Te Deum and the Mass in D by Dvořák in the Imperial Cathedral Königslutter, Haydn’s Nelson-Mass and Rutter’s Mass of the Children in Stuttgart and Orff’s Carmina Burana in the historic castle-square in Brunswick.