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 has been Chorus Director of the Deutscher Oper Berlin since the 2017/18 season. Born in Belfast, with British, Irish and German roots, he studied Music at the University of Cambridge and trained as a répétiteur at the National Opera Studio in London. After several years working as a freelance répétiteur for companies such as London’s Royal Opera and English National Opera, he took up the position of Chorus Master at the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen in 2007, and then from 2009 at the celebrated Glyndebourne Festival. As Glyndebourne’s longest-serving Chorus Master, he was responsible for the successes of his chorus in productions of BILLY BUDD, DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG, SAUL und BÉATRICE ET BÉNÉDICT among others, earning regular critical praise: “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” (Telegraph, 29 July 2015). An experienced conductor, he also conducted performances of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM and LA BOHÈME with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Glyndebourne. He has also worked with the Choeur de Radio France and the Dutch Radio Choir.
Among Bines’s successes at DOB have been the Chorus’s acclaimed performances in productions such as DAS WUNDER DER HELIANE, ANTIKRIST, NIXON IN CHINA and LA FIAMMA, as well as concerts of Britten’s WAR REQUIEM in the Philharmonie (“The chorus was the star of the evening” – Berliner Morgenpost, 11. September 2021) and TANNHÄUSER at the Edinburgh Festival (“Bouquets too to the Deutsche Oper’s immaculately tuned chorus, whose chorus master, Jeremy Bines, can be proud of what he has achieved in terms of balance, finesse and corporate ‘soul’” – Opera, November 2023).
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 Darja Schäfer
Chorvorstand
Obfrau Natalie Buck
Stellvertreter Ingo Witzke
weiteres Mitglied Jacoub Eisa
Sopran
1. Sopran Sibylle Benner — Olivia Brett — Natalie Buck — Sin-Ae Choi — Kristina Clemenz — Carolina Dawabe Valle — Ayano Hirazawa — Younghee Ko — Stephanie Lloyd — Seong-Hee Park — Rachel Pinevska — Julie Wyma
2. Sopran Sonja Bisgiel — Valeria Delmé — Suzanne Fischer — Imke Hout — Barbara Kindermann — Maja Lange — 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 — Asahi Wada — Lisa Ziehm
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 John Irvin — Jwa-Kyum Kim — Myungwon Kim — Thomas Paul — Roman Poboinyi — Hyun Chul Rim — Thaisen Rusch — Joel Scott — Aram Youn — Jonas Wuermeling
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 Jacoub Eisa — 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.
