The bass-baritone Lauri Vasar was born in Tallinn, Estonia. He studied at the music academy in Tallinn and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg.

As a member of the ensemble at the Landestheater Linz and at the opera houses in  Hannover and Hamburg the baritone sensibly enlarged his repertoire by roles such as Shaklovity/„Khovanshchina”, Marcello/„La Bohème”, Papageno/„Die Zauberflöte”, Belcore/„L’Elisir d’Amore”, ll Conte di Almaviva/„Le Nozze di Figaro”, Yeletski/„Pique Dame”, Escamillo/„Carmen”, Lescaut/„Manon Lescaut”, Sharpless/„Madama Butterfly”, Forester/„The Cunning Little Vixen“ as well as the title roles in  “Don Giovanni” and “Eugene Onegin”.

Important guest engagements led the internationally successful artist to the Salzburg Festival, the Teatro Real in Madrid, Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, Staatsoper Berlin and to the major stages Brussels, Amsterdam, Vienna, Frankfurt, Tokyo and London.

Further milestones of his career include his house debut at Opernhaus Zürich in the title role of Shostakovich’s “The Nose”, the title role of „Il Prigioniero“ under Esa-Pekka Salonen in London with the Philharmonia Orchestra as well as Wolfram in “Tannhäuser” and his first Amfortas/“Parsifal” in Budapest.  He could be seen in Lyon and at the Opéra National de Paris as Olivier in „Capriccio”. For his interpretation of “Billy Budd” at Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf he was nominated for the German Theatre Award Faust as best singing performer of the year 2011. At the Royal Opera in London he gave his house debut as Schaunard in “La Bohème”. 2016 saw his very successful performance as Figaro at the Staatsoper Berlin in a new production of „Le Nozze di Figaro“ under Gustavo Dudamel and as Graf von Gloster in Reimann’s LEAR at the Opéra National de Paris under Fabio Luisi and Calixto Bieito.

Recent important engagements are Amfortas at the Staatsoper Berlin at the Festtage in 2017 and 2018 with Daniel Barenboim, in Budapest with Adam Fischer in 2017 and at the Zurich Oper House with Simone Young in 2018; Graf von Gloster (Lear) at the Salzburger Festspiele with Franz Welser-Möst; Wolfram in Tallinn, Tschang Ling in Zemlinsky’s Kreidekreis and the “War Requiem” at the Opéra de Lyon. With his performance in “Fierrabras” he gave his house debut at La Scala in Milan in June 2018.

Future projects in 2018/19 include among others a revival of „Le Nozze di Figaro“ as well as two new productions of „Die Zauberflöte“ and „Die Verlobung im Kloster“ at the Staatsoper Berlin. In summer 2019 he will return to the Budapest Wagner Days giving his role debut as Gunther in “Götterdämmerung”.

Lauri Vasar has worked under the baton of Bertrand de Billy, Marc Albrecht, Sebastian Weigle, Michael Boder, Kirill Petrenko, Fabio Luisi, Jesús López-Cobos, Adam Fischer, Peter Schneider, Valery Gergiev, Simone Young and Daniel Baremboim. He collaborated with stage directors such as Robert Carsen, Stefan Herheim, Jürgen Flimm, Calixto Bieto, Christopher Alden, Peter Stein, Christoph Loy, Álex Ollé and Vincent Boussard.

 

September 2018