German baritone Gerrit Illenberger recently made his debut at the Bavarian State Opera as Melisso in a new production of Alcina under Stefano Montanari. Since the 2023/24 season he has been a member of the Semperoper Dresden’s Junges Ensemble, where his roles include Schaunard (La bohème). In the 2022/23 season he made his debut as Rodrigo (Don Carlo) at the Heidenheim Opera Festival under Marcus Bosch and appeared in Die Frau ohne Schatten under Kirill Petrenko at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden and the Berlin Philharmonie.
Guest engagements have since taken him to the Teatro di Modena as Reinmar (Tannhäuser), the Cuvilliés Theater in Munich as Count Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro) and the Staatsschauspiel Dresden in the title role of Don Giovanni. His repertoire further includes Papageno and Sprecher (Die Zauberflöte), Count Eberbach (Der Wildschütz), Sharpless (Madama Butterfly) and the title role in Gianni Schicchi.
Alongside his operatic career he is an accomplished concert soloist. His broad repertoire ranges from works such as Bach’s St Matthew Passion and Mendelssohn’s Elijah to rarely performed oratorios including Handel’s Occasional Oratorio and Max Bruch’s Moses. Recent highlights include debuts at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg in Franz Schmidt’s Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln under Manfred Honeck and at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam in Bach’s Mass in B Minor under Laurence Equilbey. His engagement with early music has also been shaped by a close collaboration with conductor Johanna Soller. As a Lied interpreter, he has collaborated with distinguished pianists including Gerold Huber and Malcolm Martineau, appearing at festivals and venues such as Heidelberger Frühling, the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin and the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona.
Gerrit Illenberger is the recipient of the Leonhard and Ida Wolf Memorial Prize for Music awarded by the City of Munich and the Max Liebhaber Prize of the City of Heidenheim. He also received prizes at the August Everding Music Competition. Further support has included scholarships from Yehudi Menuhin Live Music Now, the Deutschlandstipendium, the Bavarian Choir Academy and the Heidelberger Frühling Liedakademie. Before dedicating himself fully to music he completed a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering Science and a Master’s degree in Aerospace at the Technical University of Munich. He studied voice with Hartmut Elbert in Munich and with Andreas Schmidt at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich, where he also attended Christian Gerhaher’s Lied class. Encounters and exchanges with artists such as Thomas Hampson have further enriched his development.
