The Swiss tenor Rolf Romei has been singing the great tenor roles in his field for many years: LOHENGRIN, PARSIFAL, HOFFMANN, FAUST, PETER GRIMES, IDOMENEO, Tito in LA CLEMENZA DI TITO, Prince in RUSALKA, Leukippos in DAPHNE or Paul in Korngold’s DIE TOTE STADT.

In addition, Rolf Romei also appeared as Jimmy / Young Man / AMERICAN LULU at the Komische Oper Berlin or, by invitation from Calixto Bieito, the solo tenor in the staged version of Britten’s WAR REQUIEM in Bilbao. For his guest appearance as Manolios at the Graz Opera House in Martinus THE GREEK PASSION, he was widely acclaimed by the audience and in the press and the recording, which was released by Oehms Classic, received the German Record Critics’ Prize and appeared on their best list in 2017.

Rolf has been invited to perform Paul in DIE TOTE STADT at the Enescu Festival 2021 in Bucharest, at the Novaya Opera in Moscow and in 2023 at ENO, the English National Opera in London. And he made his debut in spring 2018 as part of the international music festival in Kampnagel Hamburg as Michael with Stockhausen’s THURSDAY FROM LIGHT under the direction of Peter Eötvös.

Recent engagements at his parent company, the Theater Basel, include his role debuts as Siegfried both in SIEGFRIED and in GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG in the stunning RING cycle of Benedikt von Peter and Jonathan Nott, Calaf in TURANDOT with Christof Loy and José-Miguel Pérez-Sierra, Don José in CARMEN, Jim Mahoney in AUFSTIEG UND FALL DER STADT MAHAGONNY, Macduff in Verdi’s MACBETH, Aegisth in ELEKTRA, Gandhi in Philip Glass’ SATYAGRAHA, Pelléas in PELLÉAS ET MÉLISANDE, Marquis in THE GAMBLER, Le Lépreux in Messiaen’s ST. FRANÇOIS D’ASSISE, Percy Shelley in DIOTATI.UNEDNLICH by Michael Wertmüller and the Sea Witch in ANDERSENS ERZÄHLUNGEN, two world premieres that were celebrated internationally. It was in Basel, too, that he created the stunning interpretation of Simon Stone’s DIE TOTE STADT as Paul and he was also invited to sing the same production at the Bayerische Staatsoper München under the baton of Kirill Petrenko.

In addition to the stage, Rolf Romei has a lively concert activity. Thanks to his wide- ranging repertoire, he is in demand as an interpreter of new music as well as as a soloist in great oratorios and with chamber music. For example, he stepped at the Lucerne Festival in Mozart’s DAVIDE PENITENTE and as an evangelist in Bach’s ST JOHN PASSION, in the Zurich Tonhalle in Britten’s WAR REQUIEM, in the Berlin Philharmonie with Martins GOLGOTHA and in Lisbon with Dvorak’s STABAT MATER. Under Helmuth Rilling he sang Penderecki’s CREDO, Bach’s MASS in B MINOR and Haydn’s CREATION and recorded Mozart’s MASS IN C MINOR for Swiss Radio under Michel Corboz. Since 2016 he also counts Mahler’s SONG OF THE EARTH in his repertoire.

Rolf Romei studied in Winterthur and Karlsruhe and has won several national and international competitions and sponsorship awards. In 1999 he was awarded the Swiss Culture Prize. He received important singing impulses as a private student from Nicolai Gedda. At the beginning of his career he was firmly engaged as a lyric tenor in St.Gallen and Augsburg as well as at the State Theater Oldenburg. Guest contracts took him to the opera houses of Stuttgart, Darmstadt, Bern, Aachen, Wuppertal, Würzburg, Düsseldorf, Graz and the Komische Oper Berlin , the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the Teatro Real in Madrid, as well as the Edinburgh Festival and the Ruhrtriennale.

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