Nils Wanderer

In order to break through and be successful you need to become more than only “a voice” but a personality and have an artistic vision for yourself.
cristina

Author:

by Cristina Fieraru
October 9, 2023
Read the entire

No.8/2023

of opera charm magazine

INTRODUCTION

We know how much you enjoy all our encounters with the future opera stars and today we are thrilled to bring into your attention our newest charming family member, the amazingly talented countertenor Nils Wanderer! In a conversation with Cristina Fieraru, Nils shared his experiences & his thoughts for you, our readers. From the psychological aspects of this career and the idea of embracing your inner self, to what life looks like for an opera singer in 2023 and how hard it is to break through and become successful nowadays. Read below to find the answers to your deepest curiosities & many other interesting facts about the opera world and Nils’s life!

BIOGRAPHY

Winner of the 2022 Bundeswettbewerb Gesang and Second Prize Winner of the world’s most prestigious opera competition Operalia in 2022 of which he was the only Countertenor, Nils Wanderer is a graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He was a member of its opera course and received a full scholarship under the tutelage of Andrew Watts, Siegfried Gohritz, Edith Wiens and Tobias Truninger. Recently, he has gained wide attention as Oberon in the new Laurent Pelly/Guillaume Tourniaire production of Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream at Opéra de Lille. Nils has collaborated as a soloist with orchestras such as Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Le Concert des Nations, Staatskapelle Halle and Staatskapelle Weimar, La Folia Barockorchester, Stuttgarter Kammerorchester, Thüringer Bach Collegium, Karlsruher Barockorchester, La Sfera Armoniosa… and has appeared at theatres and festivals including Deutsche Oper Berlin, Teatro Massimo Palermo, De Nederlandse Reisopera, Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar, Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Theater Bonn, Handel Festival Halle, Festival de Música Antigua de Sevilla. As a Lieder singer, he has given recitals with accomplished pianists such as Daniel Heide and Marcelo Amaral. He further appeared in concert at London Barbican Centre and, under Kent Nagano, at Berlin Philharmonie. With the complicity of Jordi Savall, Nils performed Handel’s Messiah for the Salzburger Festspiele and Bach’s St Matthew Passion at Paris Philharmonie, Chapelle Royale de Versailles and Barcelona Auditori. His concert and oratorio repertoire spans from Purcell, Vivaldi, the Bach family, Handel and Pergolesi through Berlioz, Wagner and Elgar to Bernstein and Cage. Several of his concerts have been recorded by the BBC, Bavarian Radio Station, SWR Radio, Arte, Mezzo and Medici Tv. Nils is the recipient of the First Prize at the Handel Competition in Karlsruhe, the International Anton Rubinstein Vocal Competition and the Mimas Music Festival Competition. He is the first countertenor to reach the finals of the Concours Musical International de Montréal which awarded him the Audience Prize. He received the Golden Culture Award of Stuttgart for his work as artistic director and conductor of the ensemble Meridies, and as singer of his own festival “Music in Paradise” which he co-founded with the UNESCO World Heritage Foundation in order to celebrate music in difficult times and support artists and their work during the 2019 coronavirus pandemic. Recent and future engagements include Edgar in Reimann’s Lear (Stephan Zilias/Joe Hill-Gibbins production) at Staatsoper Hannover, Apollo in Mozart’s Apollo et Hyacinthus (Giulio Prandi/Fabio Ceresa) in Malta, and Tolomeo in Handel’s Giulio Cesare at both the Oper Frankfurt (Simone Di Felice/Nadja Loschky production) and Blackwater Valley Opera Festival. Nils will headline the creation Don’t you Nomi dedicated to the visionary German countertenor Klaus Nomi and directed by Julia Lwowski at the Staatsoper Berlin.

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INTERVIEW

Dear Nils, I’m so happy to have you here and to welcome you in our big charming musical family! Thank you for accepting my invitation! I would like to start our conversation from the very beginning, where does your love for opera come from and who inspired & guided your first steps on this path? When […]

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Alice Lechner

Alice Lechner

Alice Lechner comes from a music-loving family. Her first encounter with the opera universe was at the tender age of six. The grandeur of the stage productions and costumes, the backstage chatter, and last, but definitely not least, the music left her in awe, beginning with Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The overall feeling that opera awakens in anyone who gets a glimpse into this part of artistic eternity, that each and every day passes the test of time, was what drew her to stay and be a part of this world. The Opera House of Brașov became her second home, and the people who worked there were her second family.

Since then, Alice has devoted her spare time to maximising her musical knowledge through instrumental studies, studying both piano and violin for a short time. In the following years, her number one passion stepped out of the limelight and graciously gave way to Law Studies.
Since 2018 she has been studying Law at “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University in Iași.

Her passion for opera, even if it is no longer her top professional priority in terms of career, it has most definitely become her priority during her free time. Wanting to experience the best of both worlds and extend her musical horizons, she regularly attends opera performances throughout Romania and abroad.
With OPERA Charm Magazine, Alice aims to nurture her creative side to help it flourish and bloom and to discover, alongside the magazine’s readers, the fascinatingly complex world of opera.

Currently, she is an LL.M. in Business Law at “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University in Iași.

Oana Zamfir

Oana Zamfir is a second year MA student at the “George Enescu” National University of Arts, at the Department of Musicology.

She studied violin for 12 years at the “Stefan Luchian” High School of Art in Botosani, later focusing on the theoretical aspects of music. In 2019 she completed her bachelor studies in Musicology as a student of the National Academy of Music “Gheorghe Dima” in Cluj-Napoca. Her research during 2018-2019 brought to the forefront elements of the archaic ritual within works of composers who activated during the communist period, giving her the opportunity to start a research internship at the “Carl von Ossietzky” University in Germany. In this context, she recorded conversations with members of the Sophie Drinker Institute in Bremen, and had access to documents directly from the Myriam Marbé archive.

Since 2019 she has been a teacher of Music Education and Theoretical Music Studies, making full use of interactive methods in the musical training of students and working, at the same time, with the children’s choir founded in the first year of her activity.

Her interests include pursuing a degree in interior design in 2020.

Alexandru Suciu

Alexandru Suciu inherited his passion for art growing up in a family of several generations of musicians. He began his musical studies at the “Augustin Bena” School of Music in Cluj, where he studied piano and guitar. Even though his main study direction was philological, his passion for music prevailed. He began his academical journey at the Faculty of Letters of the “Babeș-Bolyai” University, studying Comparative literature and English. He continued by studying Opera Singing at the “Gheorghe Dima” National Music Academy. He also graduated the Musical Education section, followed by Artistic Directing at the Musical Performing Arts department.

His multidisciplinary education opened the doors towards research, which is seen both through his participation in national and international conferences and symposia, such as the Salzburg Easter School PhD-forum, organized by the Salzburg Universität or the Silesian Meeting of Young Scholars, organized by the Institute of English at the University of Silesia, as well as the collaboration with Opera Charm Magazine.

During his student years, he won several prizes, including the Grand Prize at the “Paul Constantinescu” National Musical Interpretation Competition, the Romanian Composers and Musicologists’ Union Prize at the same competition, the First Prize and the Schubert Prize at the “Ada Ulubeanu” Competition.

He further developed his artistic skills by specializing in courses and masterclasses held by personalities such as Vittorio Terranova, Giuseppe Sabbatini, Marian Pop, Ines Salazar, Riccardo Zanellato, Paolo Bosisio, Valentina Farcaș and Manuel Lange in contexts such as the Internationale Sommerakademie für Operngesang Deutschlandsberg, Corso Internazionale di Canto Lirico I.M.C. Licata or the Europäische Akademie für Musik und darstellende Kunst Montepulciano. Besides his activity on-stage, he currently teaches Opera Singing Didactics, and Pedagogical Practice within the Department for Teacher Education and Training at the “Gheorghe Dima” National Music Academy.

Cristina Fieraru

Cristina is a 24 year-old Romanian soprano & a student at the National University of Music Bucharest, where she pursues the MA program in Vocal Performance.

She made her debut in Pamina from “Die Zauberflöte” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at only 19 years old at the Bucharest National Opera House, as a member of the Ludovic Spiess Experimental Opera Studio. Over the years she made her debut in roles such as Contessa d’Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro), Mimì & Musetta (La Bohème), Alice Ford (Falstaff), Erste Dame (Die Zauberflöte) in her university’s opera productions.
Her passion and experience extends in the field of choral music, too.

She has been part of our dream team since the fall of 2021. For a good period of time she took care of OPERA Charm’s social media and took you on the monthly journey through the history of opera through our Legends rubric – and a few times through the Theaters around the World rubric.

Her little soul rubric – from 2021 to present – is definitely the Conductors of the Future, where, every month, she gives you the chance to meet a young star of the world of conducting and, of course, to find out what’s the most charming feature of opera in these artists’ views.

BIANCA L. NICA

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