Schubert’s “Winterreise” with Reinhard Mayr (baritone) and Irena Portenko (piano).

Reinhard Mayr was born in Grieskirchen in Upper Austria. He began his training as a singer with bass Franz Kalchmair, continued it at the Anton Bruckner Conservatory in Linz, moved on to Kurt Widmer at the Basel Music Academy and finally to Robert Holl at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. These three singers and teachers influenced Reinhard Mayr in the various phases of his career and awakened in him a lasting passion for lieder and concert singing. However, his interest in opera has always been just as strong, and so the bass went into permanent opera engagements immediately after his studies, first at the Volksoper Vienna, debuting shortly afterwards at the Vienna State Opera and moving to the Zurich Opera House in 2001, where he remained a member of the ensemble for 16 seasons. In recent years, guest contracts have taken Reinhard Mayr to opera houses in Madrid, Florence, the Salzburg Festival and the Gärtnerplatztheater in Munich, among others.

His repertoire ranges from baroque bass roles, such as Monteverdi's Plutone or Tiridate in Handel's Radamisto, to Mozart's Sarastro, Bartolo and Masetto, numerous roles in Richard Strauss' operas, but also in Italian and Russian repertoire, as well as modern works and world premieres. Over the years, he has enjoyed the pleasure of working with many important conductors such as Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Zubin Mehta, Christoph von Dohnáyi, Franz Welser-Möst, Sir John Elliot Gardiner, Marc Minkowski, William Christie, Thomas Hengelbrock and Zubin Mehta. In addition to opera, however, the singer has always devoted himself intensively to song and oratorio. He is particularly fond of sacred baroque music and the lieder of Franz Schubert. Concerts and oratorios also take him to prestigious venues such as the Vienna Musikverein, the Royal Albert Hall, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the concert halls in Vienna and Berlin and Severance Hall in Cleveland. For many years, Reinhard Mayr has performed regularly with various baroque ensembles, such as Thomas Hengelbrock's Balthasar Neumann Ensemble, the L'Orfeo Barockorchester and the Ensemble ColCanto, with whom he also recorded a CD of sacred solo cantatas in 2015.