Klaus Florian Vogt

The German tenor Klaus Florian Vogt is identified closely with roles in Wagner’s operas, especially that of Lohengrin. He is identified as a jungendlicher Heldentenor, or youthful heroic tenor, a classification that refers not to age, but to a heroic tenor whose voice also has lyrical aspects.
Vogt was born in Heide, in northern Germany, on April 12, 1970, and has continued to live in the Schleswig-Holstein region. His first love was the horn, which he studied at university; he was engaged as a hornist by the Hamburg State Philharmonic Orchestra in 1988 and remained there until 1997. During this period, he was also taking voice lessons at the Musikhochschule Lübeck, and in 1997 he abandoned his instrumental career to perform at the Landestheater Flensburg. He moved to the Semperoper in Dresden the following year, and there music director Giuseppe Sinopoli took an interest in his career. He sang lyric tenor roles such as Tamino in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, K. 620, at first, but later he incorporated dramatic roles, such as that of Hans in Smetana’s The Bartered Bride, into his repertory. Vogt sang the Wagnerian role of Lohengrin for the first time in 2002 at the Erfurt Theater. He has since sung that role in major houses worldwide, including La Scala in Milan, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and the Bavarian State Opera. He has also performed it at the pinnacle of the Wagnerian world, the Bayreuth Festival. Vogt has added other Wagnerian roles, such as Parsifal and Stoltzing in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, to his repertory, often earning strong critical acclaim. Vogt was signed to the Sony Classical label in 2011 and released his debut album, Heroes, the following year; it earned him Germany’s prestigious Echo Klassik award for Singer of the Year. He has issued several more albums for Sony Classical, including Klaus Florian Vogt Sings Wagner (2013) and Favorites (2014). In 2019 Vogt was heard as Tamino on a recording of Die Zauberflöte, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. ~ James Manheim