Biography
Photo: Jochen Klenk
Guest of the National Theatre Opera.
Hans-Jörg Weinschenk was born in 1947 in Stuttgart. Between 1970 and 1974 he studied voice at the local Musikhochschule under the tutelage of Josef Traxel. He sang on opera stages in Heidelberg and Wuppertal, and since 1980 has been a soloist of the Badisches Staatstheater in Karlsruhe. He has performed as a guest in a host of German theatres in, for example, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Hanover, Stuttgart, Bonn, Freiburg, Nuremburg, Frankfurt, and for many years time worked for Munich’s Gärtnerplatztheater. Furthermore, he has sung in Zurich, Basel, Strasbourg, Montpellier, Bordeaux, at Paris’s Opéra Comique and Madrid’s Teatro Real.
His repertoire includes some one hundred tenor opera, operetta and musical roles. To mention but a few: Jaquino (Beethoven: Fidelio), Wagner’s Steuerman (Der fliegende Holländer), David (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg) and Mime (Siegfried), Britten’s Albert Herring, Basilio (Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro), Vašek (Smetana: The Bartered Bride). On his home stage, he is now performing as, for example, the Witch (Humperdinck: Hänsel und Gretel), Remendado (Bizet: Carmen), Frosch (J. Strauss: Die Fledermaus).
In 2000 he was awarded the honorific German title Kammersänger (Chamber Singer).
Update: March 2008