Daniel Behle

Germany’s Daniel Behle is one of the most versatile figures on the contemporary vocal music scene. He performs concerts, sings in operas, and gives song recitals, covering repertory from the Baroque to contemporary times, and in addition to these he is a composer of note. Behle was born in Hamburg in 1973. His mother, Renate Behle, was a dramatic soprano; she gave Daniel his first singing lessons when he was 22, and he continued to study with her in the early 2000s. He also majored in trombone at the Musikhochschule Hamburg, took lessons from tenor James Wagner, and took composition lessons from Peter Michael Hamel. Making his debut at the Oldenburger Staatstheater in the 2003-2004 season, he later joined the in-house rosters of the Volksoper in Vienna and the Frankfurt Opera. He has been independent since 2010 and has sung at the Paris Opera, Vienna State Opera, and Berlin State Opera, among other houses. In 2017-2018, Behle made his debut at Bayreuth as David in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Behle has also given concerts with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, the WDR Radio Orchestra Cologne, the Beethoven Orchestra of Bonn, and the International Bach Academy Stuttgart. Making his recording debut in 2009 with a recital of songs by Schubert, Beethoven, Britten, Grieg, and Trojahn, Behle garnered a ranking as one of the 15 best albums of the year from the Metropolitan Opera in New York. That album appeared on the Phoenix Edition label, and since then Behle has recorded for a variety of prestige imprints: Capriccio, Sony Classical, Oehms, Decca, Genuin, Berlin Classics, and Deutsche Harmonia Mundi. His albums have spanned the spectrum from the arcane (he has recorded his own arrangement of Schubert’s Die Winterreise, D. 921, voice and piano trio for Sony) to the broadly accessible. His 2017 album Nostalgia was an appealing collection of popular operetta selections. Behle earned a 2014 Grammy Award nomination for his performance on a recording of Leonardo Vinci's Artaserse. ~ James Manheim