About the Chorus - Deutsche Oper Berlin
The chorus is the beating heart of any opera company’s onstage presence, and none more so than the Chor der Deutschen Oper. One of the busiest choruses of their calibre anywhere in the world, they can be seen and heard night after night devoting heart and soul to a vast range of works; equally at home in new productions and in their enormous repertoire, the Chor der Deutschen Oper performs around 35 titles over the course of the season, from the great Wagner operas such as Lohengrin and Tannhäuser for which they are particularly renowned, to world premières such as Detlev Glanert’s recent International Opera Award-winning Oceane.
The Chor der Deutschen Oper has been captivating its audiences since the inaugural performances of Fidelio at the house’s opening in 1912. When their first chorus director, Hans Leschke, left after a few years to devote himself to the study of sedges in California, he handed the reins to his assistant Hermann Lüddecke, whose leadership was to provide a stabilising influence well into the post-war years; his Germanic approach can be heard to great effect in such celebrated recordings as the Eugen Jochum Carmina Burana, which cemented the chorus’s world renown. The second half of the twentieth century was dominated by their work with the influential Walter Hagen-Groll, who built upon and expanded Lüddecke’s stylistic approach and left a powerful legacy, leaving a great number of celebrated recordings to the chorus’s name.
The changing times brought a more internationalist outlook, and a fresh renaissance ocurred under the leadership of American William Spaulding, under whose tenure the chorus was crowned Opernwelt’s Chorus of the Year three times in quick succession from 2008 to 2010, and enjoyed rave reviews for its guest performances of Tannhäuser and Verdi’s Requiem at the BBC Proms.
Since current chorus director Jeremy Bines’s arrival from Glyndebourne in 2017, the Chor der Deutschen Oper has continued to inspire, impress and delight the opera-goers of Berlin and the world, gaining triumphant critical praise for their performances in such epic works as Le prophète and Das Wunder der Heliane, as well as playing pivotal roles in the Opera Award-winning production of Detlev Glanert’s Oceane in 2019, DOB’s monumental Meyerbeer cycle (completed just before lockdown in 2020), and the Grammy-nominated DVD of Der Zwerg. They were proud to be nominated for Chorus of the Year at the International Opera Awards 2021, and since the opening of the 2021-2 season have been singled out by critics for their performances of Britten’s War Requiem in the Berlin Philharmonie, and in DOB’s new Götterdämmerung. – Jeremy Bines
European Chorus Award, presented by Pro Europa Foundation
Opera Chorus of the Year 2008, Opera Chorus of the Year 2009, Opera Chorus of the Year 2010, presented by magazine "Opernwelt"
Jeremy Bines joined the Deutsche Oper Berlin as Chorus Director at the start of the 2017/18 season. Born in Belfast, and of British, Irish and German heritage, Bines studied at Cambridge University and the National Opera Studio in London. Having worked for a number of years as a freelance répétiteur for such companies as the Royal Opera Covent Garden and English National Opera, Bines took up a post as Chorus Master of the Royal Danish Opera in 2007, and then of the celebrated Glyndebourne Festival in 2009. He remains Glyndebourne’s longest-serving Chorus Master, and during his time there was responsible for the chorus’s successes in productions such as Billy Budd, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Saul and Béatrice et Bénédict, consistently winning critical acclaim: “The chorus is the soul of everything that Glyndebourne is and stands for: every year, one can only marvel at the fresh beauty of the sound it produces as well as its resourceful and imaginative acting… Glyndebourne’s chorus is special” (Telegraph, 29 July 2015). A skilled conductor, he also conducted performances of A midsummer night’s dream and La bohème with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the Glyndebourne Festival.
Highlights of Bines’ tenure at the Deutsche Oper Berlin include his highly-praised work on with the chorus on productions of Le Prophète, Das Wunder der Heliane, Oceane, La Sonnambula and, more recently, Britten’s War Requiem in the Philharmonie (“The star of the evening was the chorus” – Berliner Morgenpost, 11 September 2021).
Ehrenmitglieder des Chores
Chordirektion
Erster Chordirektor Jeremy Bines
Stellvertretender Chordirektor Thomas Richter
Chor-Repetitor Jamison Livsey
Leiterin des Chorbüros Stefanie Kötter
Stellvertretende Leiterin des Chorbüros Nora Schliermann
Chorvorstand
Obfrau Natalie Buck
Stellvertreter Ingo Witzke
weiteres Mitglied Thaisen Rusch
Sopran
1. Sopran Sibylle Benner — Olivia Brett — Natalie Buck — Sin-Ae Choi — Kristina Clemenz — Carolina Dawabe Valle — Younghee Ko — Stephanie Lloyd — Seong-Hee Park — Rachel Pinevska — Alyson Rosales — Julie Wyma
2. Sopran Sonja Bisgiel — Valeria Delmé — Suzanne Fischer — Constance Gärtner — Imke Hout — Barbara Kindermann — Amelie Müller — Angelika Nolte — Antje Obenaus — Gyumi Park— Andrea Schwarzbach — Yuuki Tamai
Alt
1. Alt Ekaterina Baeva — Birgit Bauer — Nicole Drees — Mirjam Groth — Kristina Griep — Heidrun Häßner — Mahtab Keshavarz — Cordula Messer — Elke Redmann — Maja Siebenschuh — Veronika Verebély — Asahi Wada
2. Alt Senta Aue — Brigitte Bergmann — Isolde Claassen — Margarita Greiner — Nicole Hyde — Inga Maleike — Lorena Medina — Seungeun Oh — Ireene Ollino — Marie Pierre Zanon
Tenor
1. Tenor Ljudmil Georgiev — John Irvin — Jwa-Kyum Kim — Myungwon Kim — Seung Yeop Lee — Hyun Chul Rim — Thaisen Rusch — Michael Schöne — Joel Scott — Aram Youn
2. Tenor Haico Apel — Daniel Badura — Ho-Sung Kang — Robert Klöpper — Jan Müller — Robert Neumann — Olli Rantaseppä — Frank Wentzel — Chunho You
Bass
1. Bass Heiner Boßmeyer — Oliver Boyd — Kwang-Seok Cho — Mike Fischer — Alexander Hoffmann — Daesoon Kim — Tadeusz Milewski — Hong-Kyun Oh — Piotr Wawrowski
2. Bass Holger Gerberding — Peter Hjuler — Marek Picz — Tomasz Rakocz — Rüdiger Scheibl — Björn Struck — René Tischlinger-Turri — Ingo Witzke
VdO, Ortsvorstand
Vereinigung deutscher Opernchöre und Bühnentänzer e.V.
Vorsitzender Björn Struck
Stellvertreterinnen Natalie Buck — Senta Aue
Kinderchor
Leiter Christian Lindhorst
The Children's and Young People's Choir of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, with around 150 singers, is a strongly integrated ensemble partner of the house. Here the children and young people receive sound musical and vocal training in age-appropriate choral groups with the aim of performing on the opera stage together with the professionals and showing their skills in concerts. In the 2022/23 season, the children's choir can again be seen in many productions, e.g. CARMEN, HÄNSEL UND GRETEL, LA BOHÈME, TOSCA, TURANDOT as well as in the traditional "Spring Singing" in the Tischlerei.
Aside from the opera performances at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, all the choral groups also appear at other venues in Berlin and further afield. Our youngest budding singers in the Mini Chorus focus for example on rehearsing carols in the run-up to Christmas. The Children’s Chorus, the Concert Chorus, the Voice-Changers (our company of young male singers) and the Youth Chorus cover a repertoire stretching from the Renaissance to contemporary music. In July 2018 the Concert Chorus was travel to Tshwane, South Africa, for the World Choir Games.
Vocal development: Soloists of our chorus
Tanja Ammon, Senta Aue, Rosemarie Arzt, Natali Buck, Kristina Griep, Nicole Hyde
Head of Children’s Chorus
Christian Lindhorst
Your contact for questions and registrations
Tino Breitbarth
Stage manager of the Children's Chorus and the Young Chorus
Kontakt: breitbarth@deutscheoperberlin.de
The Children's Chorus is supported by Dobolino e.V. and Engel & Völkers Commercial Berlin.
