Stephan Rügamer

Tenor Stephan Rügamer is an unusually versatile singer, with a repertory running from Mozart to heavier works by Wagner and Mussorgsky. He is fluent in the operatic styles of several national traditions. Rügamer was born in Bavaria. He first planned to study music education at the Musikhochschule Würzburg, but then switched to singing and moved to the Musikhochschule Lübeck, where he worked with James Wagner and Günter Binge. Rügamer got his first break at the Lübeck Theater, where he was a member of the company from 1995 to 1998 and sang such roles as Don Ottavio in Mozart's Don Giovanni and Alfredo in Verdi's La traviata. The following year, he was spotted by conductor Daniel Barenboim and engaged as a singer at the Berlin Staatsoper. He has remained associated with that company ever since, appearing in several major productions conducted by Barenboim. He has sung an unusually wide variety of roles with the company, including Tamino in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, David in Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Narraboth in Richard Strauss' Salome, and Shuysky in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov. Rügamer has also appeared as a guest artist in opera houses around Germany and abroad, including the Semperoper in Dresden, La Scala in Milan, and the Teatro Real in Madrid. He has sung in concert with the Jerusalem Philharmonie Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Gulbenkian Orchestra Lisbon, among other ensembles, and has given vocal recitals at many major halls and festivals around Europe and North America. Rügamer has made several recordings. In 2013, he appeared as Loge in Wagner's Das Rheingold under Valery Gergiev in a Mariinsky Theater production, and he was heard the following year in Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde on the MDG label. Although he has not specialized in contemporary music, Rügamer appeared in 2020 on a Chandos recording of Luigi Dallapiccola's difficult cantata Il Prigioniero. He also recorded an album of folk songs with junior members of the Lübeck Opera Company. Rügamer has been on the vocal faculty of the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin since 2007. ~ James Manheim