Debut at the Metropolitan Opera
Singing graduate Nils Wanderer is pursuing an international career as a countertenor
This engagement will boost his future career: Weimar singing alumnus Nils Wanderer will make his debut at the famous Metropolitan Opera (Met) in New York in the 2025/26 season in an opera about Frida Kahlo.
He will sing the role of Leonardo in the Met premiere of the opera ‘El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego’ by American composer Gabriela Lena Frank in May and June 2026. The internationally renowned conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who is the acting music director of the Met, will be at the podium.
‘It's surreal: as an artist and singer who moves between the worlds of classical music and modern culture, I am infinitely grateful to be seen and understood,’ says Nils Wanderer, visibly moved by his engagement.
‘This debut at the Metropolitan Opera was a long and special journey that would never have been possible without my family, friends and companions,’ adds the countertenor, who studied opera singing in the class of Prof. Siegfried Gohritz at the Music University in Weimar.
Composer Gabriela Lena Frank makes her Met debut with her first opera, a magical-realist portrait of Mexican painter couple Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, with a libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz.
The story is a reversal of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth: Frida leaves the underworld on the Day of the Dead and reunites with Diego. The famous – or infamous – couple briefly relive their turbulent love, embracing passion and pain before saying a final farewell to the land of the living.
Nils Wanderer, winner of the 2022 Bundeswettbewerb Gesang (German National Singing Competition) and second-place winner of the world-renowned Operalia opera competition in 2022, has been praised for his ‘beautiful, dark, well-developed and amber-coloured voice, which unfolds a wide range of colours throughout the entire plot, with irony, tenderness, resentment, authority, generosity, all with remarkable diction and a magnetic stage presence’ (Olyrix).
Highlights of the current 2024/25 season include engagements as Oberon in Benjamin Britten's ‘A Midsummer Night's Dream’ at the Glyndebourne Opera Festival, the Ozawa Festival in Japan and the Hanover State Opera.
In addition, Nils Wanderer sings Tolomeo in Handel's ‘Giulio Cesare’ at the Opéra National du Capitole, Mary Sunshine in Kander's ‘Chicago’ at the Komische Oper Berlin, Dido in ‘Dido and Aeneas’ at the Mecklenburgisches Staatstheater Schwerin – and Athamas in Handel's ‘Semele’ at Atlanta Opera. In addition, he performed at Lollapalooza Berlin with his programme Wanderer.
In the 2023/24 season, Nils Wanderer was the leading actor in the world premiere of Don't you Nomi?, dedicated to the German countertenor Klaus Nomi and directed by Julia Lwowski at the Staatsoper Berlin. He also performed in Handel's ‘Messiah’ at the Salzburg Festival with Jordi Savall as his partner, as well as in Bach's ‘St. Matthew Passion’ at the Philharmonie in Paris, the Chapelle Royale de Versailles and the Barcelona Auditori.
As a soloist, he has worked with orchestras such as the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Le Concert des Nations, La Folia, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, the Karlsruhe Baroque Orchestra and La Sfera Armoniosa.
As a lieder singer, Nils Wanderer has given recitals with renowned pianists such as Daniel Heide, Craig Terry and Marcelo Amaral. His concert and oratorio repertoire spans four centuries, from Purcell, Bach, Handel and Pergolesi to Berlioz, Wagner and Elgar, and on to Bernstein and Cage.
Several of his concerts have been recorded by the BBC, Bayerischer Rundfunk, SWR, Arte, Mezzo and Medici.tv. Nils Wanderer is an ambassador and board member of the German AIDS Foundation and a representative of queer music culture in Germany.
[4 March 2025]