Daniel Behle
“Daniel Behle confirms his high reputation as a Mozart lyric tenor. His unforced, evenly produced tone
is always easy to the ear, his coloratura fluent, his phrasing stylish and sensitive. (…) it’s hard to think
of a contemporary tenor who could better encompass the varied demands of these arias.” Richard
Wigmore, Gramophone, November 2019
The singer and composer Daniel Behle was honoured as "Singer of the Year" in 2020 for his "MoZart" recording with OPUS Klassik. He is equally successful in concert, Lied and opera and made his highly acclaimed debut as Lohengrin in early 2020. His repertoire ranges from Baroque masterpieces, classical and romantic repertoire to 20th and 21st century compositions.
Daniel Behle is also increasingly making a name for himself as a composer: After the arrangements for tenor and piano trio "WinterreiseN" (Sony Classical), "Mein Hamburg" (Berlin Classics) and "Meine schönsten Weihnachtslieder" (Sony Classical) the highly acclaimed world premiere of his first operetta "Hopfen und Malz" (hops and malt), took place in January 2023 in Annaberg-Buchholz. Currently, he is working on his second operetta.
In 2023/24, he returns to the Salzburger Festspiele under the baton of Adam Fischer (Mozart “Il re pastore”). He performs Beethoven “Missa solemnis” with Rotterdams Filharmonisch Orkest and Andrew Manze, and with Le Cercle de l’Harmonie and Jérémie Rhorer, sings a New Year’s gala concert with the Sinfonieorchester Basel under Delyana Lazarova’s direction and returns to the Berliner Philharmoniker to perform Schönberg‘s „Die Jakobsleiter“ with Kirill Petrenko.
Recitals and chamber music projects take him to Lucerne and to the Stadttheater Olten. He will perform opera at the Netherlands Opera Amsterdam (“Lohengrin”), Scala di Milano and Wiener Staatsoper (“Die Entführung aus dem Serail and at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden (“Così fan tutte”).
Daniel Behle regularly performs with orchestras such as the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, the Berliner and Wiener Philharmoniker, the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, Orchestra dell' Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the Wiener Symphoniker and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, working with conductors such as Bertrand de Billy, Semyon Bychkov, Hartmut Haenchen, Thomas Hengelbrock, Pablo Heras-Casado, Marek Janowski, Philippe Jordan, Fabio Luisi, Andrew Manze, Ingo Metzmacher, Kent Nagano, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Jérémie Rhorer, Christian Thielemann, Lorenzo Viotti and Franz Welser-Möst. Recent recital projects have taken him to the Wigmore Hall London, Schubertiade, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, KKL Luzern and Musikverein Wien.
Important opera engagements in recent years have taken him to the Royal Opera House Covent Garden ("Così fan tutte", "Don Giovanni". “Die Zauberflöte”), the Staatstheater Stuttgart ("Freischütz", "Lohengrin"), Opernhaus Zürich ("Die Entführung aus dem Serail", "Arabella"), the Bayerische Staatsoper München ("Arabella", “Giuditta”), Semperoper Dresden („Rheingold“ and „Meistersinger“) and the Bayreuther Festspiele ("Meistersinger", "Tannhäuser").
His steadily growing discography includes 18 solo albums, several of them award-winning. His second Strauss album "Un-Erhört" (Prospero Classical) with Oliver Schnyder at the piano was awarded the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik. His most recent releases “Heimat” with German Hornsound (Prospero) and the Beethoven album “Gegenliebe” with Jan Schultsz on fortepiano (Pan Classics) have been especially well received.
Daniel Behle lives in Basel with his wife, the Swiss violist Carla Branca Behle, and their three children.