Michael Kraus

Michael Kraus was among the singers the State Opera Rousse fielded at Solothurn in 2009, on a Swiss engagement whose cast also drew in Olga Savova, Vladimir Petrov, Noemi Nadelmann and Jana Bernathova. The Viennese baritone studied at the conservatories of Vienna and Munich and began in Ulm, Aachen and at the Volksoper before guesting at the state operas of Vienna, Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, and at Zurich, La Scala, the Liceu, Covent Garden, the Opéra National de Paris, San Francisco and Glyndebourne. He sang Papageno under Georg Solti with the Vienna Philharmonic for Decca and Leporello under Nikolaus Harnoncourt in Amsterdam, took the title role in the 2000 premiere of Turina's Don Quixote en Barcelona and sang in Palomar's La cabeza del Bautista in 2009, both at the Liceu, and Faninal under Simon Rattle in Amsterdam in 2011. Salzburg heard his Thoas in 2015, Dresden his Donner in 2016, Düsseldorf his first Alberich in 2017 and 2018. He has recorded Ullmann's Der Kaiser von Atlantis for Decca, and since September 2020 has directed the International Opera Studio of the Vienna State Opera.