Since graduating from the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, Gábor Bretz’s regular performances at the Hungarian State Opera have included the title-roles in Mefistofele and Le Nozze di Figaro, Leporello and the title-role in Don Giovanni, Banquo Macbeth, Colline La Bohème, Don Basilio Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Escamillo Carmen, Gurnemanz Parsifal, Zaccaria Nabucco, Orestes Elektra, Marcel Les Huguenots, Fiesco Simon Boccanegra and Pogner Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, in addition to Landgraf Tannhauser at the Wagner Festival under Adam Fischer and for the Palace of Arts in Budapest.
Other notable appearances include the title role Der fliegende Holländer at the Passionstheater; Ferrando Il Trovatore at the Royal Opera House; Escamillo Carmen at the Bayerische Staatsoper, the Royal Opera House, the Metropolitan Opera, New York, the New National Theatre in Tokyo and the Hamburg State Opera; Colline La Bohème at the Royal Opera House; Shaklovity Khovanshchina at Dutch National Opera; Phillipe II Don Carlos at the Hamburg State Opera, in a Peter Konwitschny production; Scarpia Tosca at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna; a staged Verdi Requiem at the Hamburg State Opera; King Heinrich Lohengrin at La Monnaie, Brussels; Jochanaan Salome at the Salzburg Festival and numerous performances in the title role of Bluebeard’s Castle with The Berlin Philharmonic, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, the Bayerische Rundfunk Orchestra, Oregon Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic under Daniel Barenboim, Gustavo Dudamel, Adam Fischer, Ed Gardner, Daniele Gatti, Valery Gergiev, Daniel Harding, Michele Mariotti and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Gábor Bretz has also worked with other eminent conductors including Alain Altinoglu, Philippe Jordan, Kent Nagano, Simon Rattle, Juraj Valčuha and Omer Meir Wellber.
Gábor Bretz sings regularly in concert. His repertoire includes the major oratories of Bach, Haydn, and Mozart; Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9; Tippett’s A Child of our Time; Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ; Verdi’s Requiem; Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 and Handel’s Messiah under Sylvain Cambreling, Carlo Montanaro and Helmuth Rilling.
Notable roles in recent seasons include Sarastro Die Zauberflöte at La Monnaie, Verdi’s Requiem at the Royal Opera House, Escamillo Carmen and Filippo II Don Carlos at the Hamburg State Opera, and Gurnemanz Parsifal with the Hallé Orchestra. He has also performed the title role in Don Quichotte at the Bregenzer Festspiele – for which he received the Austrian Music Critic Theatre Prize in 2019 – and in Bluebeard’s Castle at Teatro Massimo, Palermo, Concertgebouw, Amsterdam and with the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra.
In 2019-20, Bretz sang the four Villains in Les Contes d’Hoffmann at La Monnaie, Brussels, and Don Pizarro Fidelio at Theater an der Wien staged by double Oscar-winner Christoph Waltz.
In the forthcoming season Bretz will sing Don Pizarro Fidelio in Paris; Scarpia Tosca in Vienna and will return to London as King Heinrich Lohengrin. At the end of the season he will appear again as Jochanaan Salome – a role he sang to great acclaim at the Salzburg Festival in 2018 and 2019 – at the Festival of Aix-en-Provence.
Gábor Bretz has been a vocal professor at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest since 2018.
