Georg Nigl

His distinctive timbre, which lends special weight and character to his roles, has taken him to every major opera stage: the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, Staatsoper Berlin, Bavarian State Opera, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Dutch National Opera Amsterdam, Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, and festivals such as Salzburg, Aix-en-Provence, the Ruhrtriennale, and the Wiener Festwochen. He has collaborated with conductors including Daniel Barenboim, Teodor Currentzis, Valery Gergiev, Daniel Harding, Pablo Heras-Casado, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, René Jacobs, Vladimir Jurowski, Kirill Petrenko, and Sir Simon Rattle, as well as directors Andrea Breth, Romeo Castellucci, Frank Castorf, Barrie Kosky, Hans Neuenfels, Johan Simons, Dmitri Tcherniakov, and Sasha Waltz.

Georg Nigl has been hailed not only as a soloist in numerous world premieres, but also as an instigator of new works and publications by composers such as Friedrich Cerha, Pascal Dusapin, Georg Friedrich Haas, Wolfgang Mitterer, Olga Neuwirth, and Wolfgang Rihm.

His chamber music repertoire spans from the Baroque through Viennese Classicism to the present day, developed and performed with Alexander Melnikov, Luca Pianca, Olga Pashchenko, Vladimir Jurowski, Gérard Wyss, or Alexander Gergelyfi. His album “Vanitas,” released in spring 2020 with Beethoven’s “An die ferne Geliebte,” selected Schubert songs, and Wolfgang Rihm’s “Vermischter Traum,” received the German Record Critics’ Annual Award in 2021. In spring 2023, his album “Echo” appeared with songs and ballads by Schubert, Loewe, Schumann, and Wolf to high critical praise. In July 2025, together with clavichordist Alexander Gergelyfi, he released “Mozart’s Clavichord” on Alpha Classics, featuring songs and arias by Wolfgang Amadé Mozart.

Highlights of recent seasons include the premiere of Beat Furrer’s Violetter Schnee at Staatsoper Unter den Linden and his acclaimed Jakob Lenz by Wolfgang Rihm, which he brought to the Salzburg Festival in 2022. At the Vienna State Opera he triumphed as Eisenstein in Strauss’ Die Fledermaus, in the title role of Monteverdi’s Orfeo, as Ulisse in Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, as Nekrotzar in Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre, and as Clov in Kurtág’s Fin de partie. He proved his versatility as Alberich in a concert performance of Wagner’s Das Rheingold with Sir Simon Rattle and as Eisenstein in a new production of Die Fledermaus at the Bavarian State Opera. In summer 2023 he appeared at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence as Don Alfonso in Mozart’s Così fan tutte, a role he revived in February 2024 at the Théâtre du Châtelet. At Easter 2025 he sang Klingsor for the first time in a new Parsifal at the Tyrolean Festival in Erl.

With his self-conceived “Night Music” serenade cycle at the Stefan Zweig Center – together with Alexander Gergelyfi and actor Ulrich Noethen – he created one of the standouts of the 2023 Salzburg Festival. Because of its success, the cycle returned in 2025 for a third edition, now with actor August Diehl.

In the 2025–2026 season he appears in revivals of Kurtág’s Fin de partie and Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre, and for the first time as Alberich in Wagner’s Ring at the Vienna State Opera. He also takes part in Olga Neuwirth’s world premiere Monster’s Paradise at the Hamburg State Opera and Zurich, and continues his Night Music series at the Salzburg Festival with August Diehl. Together with Nicholas Ofczarek he unveils a new evening in May 2026 at the Vienna State Opera’s NEST. In summer, his new recording of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin – performed on a square piano by Alexander Gergelyfi – will appear.

In the 2015 Opernwelt critics’ poll he was named “Singer of the Year” for Rihm’s Lenz. Most recently he received the Austrian Music Theater Prize for his interpretation of Nekrotzar in Le Grand Macabre at the Vienna State Opera.