Pavol Breslik Tenor

Season 23/24 Artist

Pavol Breslik was born in Slovakia and began his career performing roles from the Mozartian repertoire (Idamante in Idomeneo, Ferrando in Così fan tutte, Belmonte in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni, and Tamino in Die Zauberflöte—a role he also performed for his Paris Opera debut). Between 2003 and 2006 he was a member of the Berlin Staatsoper. He rapidly expanded his repertoire to include bel canto roles (Nemorino in L’Elisir d’amore, Gennaro in Lucrezia Borgia, Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor, the title role in Roberto Devereux, and Leicester in Maria Stuarda). Soon thereafter, he began to tackle the great Verdi roles, appearing as Macduff (Macbeth), Cassio (Otello), Alfredo (La Traviata), and Fenton (Falstaff). He is also an accomplished performer of French opera (Gounod’s Faust, Nadir in Les Pêcheurs de perles, Roméo in Roméo et Juliette) as well as the Slav repertoire (Lensky in Eugene Onegin in Vienna and Munich, Steva in Jenůfa, Hans in The Bartered Bride in Dresden and Munich, and the Prince in Rusalka with the Berlin Philharmonic). The music of the 20^th century also occupies an important place in his career. Indeed, he has sung the roles of Narraboth in Salomé at the Salzburg Easter Festival, the Italian Singer in Der Rosenkavalier and Henry in Die Schweigsame Frau at Munich’s Bayerische Staatsoper; Peter Quint in The Turn of the Screw in Zurich and the Painter and the Negro in Lulu at the Salzburg Festival. He has also made several forays into the realms of operetta (Alfred in Die Fledermaus, Danilo in Die Lustige Witwe). To mark the opening of the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, he gave the world premiere performance of Wolfgang Rihm’s Reminiszenz. He appears in concert all over Europe, notably at the Munich Festival (Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin). He also gives recitals (Winterreise with the pianist Amir Katz at the Hohenems Schubertiade). During the 2019-2020 season, he sang the roles of Fenton (Otto Nicolai’s The Merry Wives of Windsor) at the Berlin Staatsoper, Lensky at the Vienna Staatsoper, Edgardo (Lucia di Lammermoor) and the Duke of Mantua (Rigoletto) in Dresden, Don Ottavio in Bratislava, Hans (The Bartered Bride), Tamino and Nemorino in Munich, and Edwin (Princesse Czardas) in Zurich.