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About
Austrian baritone Michael Kraus made his Royal Opera debut in 2016 as Biterolf (Tannhäuser) and has since returned to sing Faninal (Der Rosenkavalier).
Kraus was born in Vienna and studied at the music academies there and in Munich. He began his career in the opera houses of Aachen and Ulm and with the Vienna Volksoper, and now sings for companies including Paris Opéra, Vienna, Berlin, Hamburg and Bavarian State Operas, Frankfurt Opera, Dutch National Opera, Opera Vlaanderen, Komische Oper Berlin, Liceu, Barcelona and San Francisco Opera, in Düsseldorf and for the Salzburg Festival. Originally a Mozart specialist, he has sung Papageno (Die Zauberflöte) with the Vienna Philharmonic under Georg Solti and Leporello in Amsterdam under Nikolaus Harnoncourt. His current repertory includes Count di Luna (Il trovatore), Don Carlo di Vargas (La forza del destino), Gianni Schicchi, Thoas (Iphigénie en Tauride), Ottokar (Der Freischütz), Herald (Lohengrin), Alberich and Donner (Das Rheingold), Sixtus Beckmesser (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg), Gabriel von Eisenstein (Die Fledermaus), Herr von Faninal (Der Rosenkavalier), Music Master (Ariadne auf Naxos) and Prus (The Makropulos Case).
Kraus has a strong interest in contemporary and 20th-century opera and has sung in the world premieres of Enric Palomar’s La cabeza del Bautista (Liceu, Barcelona, 2009) and Christian Jost’s Rumor (Opera Vlaanderen, 2012). His 20th-century roles include Stolzius (Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten) and the title roles in Turina’s Don Quijote en Barcelonaand Ullmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis.