See 15 performances featuring Michael SpyresMichael Spyres was born in Mansfield (Missouri), where he grew up in a family of musicians. He began his studies in the U.S.A. and continued them at the Vienna Conservatory, Austria.
After his debut at the Teatro San Carlo of Naples in 2006 as Jaquino in Fidelio, Spyres performed the role of Alberto from Rossini's La Gazzetta at the Bad Wildbad Rossini Festival and toured Japan as Alfredo in Verdi’s La Traviata. He returned to Bad Wildbad in July 2008 for his role debut as Rossini’s Otello.
For the 2008/2009 season, Michael Spyres became member of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, where he performed roles such as Tamino in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and Steuermann in Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer. Other important engagements in 2008/2009 were his UK debut in London as Fernand in a concert performance of La Favorite, his debut at the Teatro alla Scala di Milano as Belfiore in Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims and his his first Raoul in Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots for the SummerScape Festival in New York.
Important engagements of the 2009/2010 season were the title role in Bernstein’s Candide at the Vlaamse Opera, as Roméo in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette at Opera Ireland, Néoclès in Rossini's Le siège de Corinthe in concert performances at the Wildbad Rossini Festival as well as Tybalt in Roméo et Juliette for the Salzburg Festival 2010. In May 2010, Spyres performed the role of Ozìa in Mozart’s Betulia Liberata with Riccardo Muti at the Salzburg Whitsun Festival.
Roles in 2010/2011 included Gianetto in Rossini's La gazza ladra for Semperoper Dresden, Ramiro in Rossini's La Cenerentola for the Teatro Comunale di Bologna and Arnold in Rossini's Guillaume Tell at the Caramoor Festival.
In October 2011, he returned to La Scala as Rodrigo in Rossini's La donna del lago. Further engagements during the 2011/2012 season included a tour of Beethoven's 9th Symphony with John Eliot Gardiner in the UK and Germany, Candide at the Opera di Roma, Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor with Minnesota Opera, Masaniello in Auber's La Muette de Portici in Paris, Berlioz' Requiem with John Eliot Gardiner at the St Denis Festival as well as Baldassare in Rossini's Ciro in Babilonia at the Caramoor Festival and at the Rossini Festival in Pesaro.
Some of his future engagements after 2012/2013 include his comeback to the Rossini Festival in Pesaro as Rodrigo in La donna del lago, concert performances of La damnation de Faust with Esa-Pekka Salonen in Munich, his debut at Lyric Opera Chicago as Alfred in Die Fledermaus, Benvenuto Cellini in Terry Gilliam's new production at the English National Opera and a new production of Mozart's Idomeneo at Covent Garden. His Wigmore Hall debut is planned for 2014.
Michael Spyres has recorded Rossini's La Gazzetta, Otello and Le siège de Corinthe for Naxos. His first Solo CD A Fool For Love (Delos) was released in September 2011.
November 2012
| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 5-Dec-2012 Carnegie Hall: Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage | Bellini's Beatrice di Tenda never takes off at Carnegie Hall |
 The prefab riffs of computer programs like GarageBand aren’t entirely new. As shown by the musicologist Robert Gjerdingen, many 18th- and early 19th-century composers used pedagogical materials as a basis for their compositions, “composing out” passages in creative ways. But this method is not something the ordinary listener is supposed to recognize.Read full review... | |
| 19-Nov-2012 Segerstrom Center for the Arts: Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall | John Eliot Gardiner enlightens with Beethoven's Missa Solemnis in Orange County |
 Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis is an odd piece. Despite having a rich recorded legacy, it is not a piece that one encounters often in the concert hall. The technical challenges of this music are up there with virtually any other piece of combined music for choir and orchestra. As performed by the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir last night, its difficulty was dispatched with an awe-inspiring fervor.Read full review... | |
| 16-Nov-2012 Carnegie Hall: Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage | John Eliot Gardiner's Beethoven 9 still shocks at Carnegie Hall |
 As I walked to this concert by the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir, I wondered what might have changed in Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s Beethoven in the two decades since he first recorded these symphonies. In the early 1990s the period-instrument movement was at its height, and the shock of the new (in the guise of the old) drew dividing lines between those who insisted that Beethoven needed to be played with original instruments at the composer’s set speeds, and those who believed in the importance of tradition.Read full review... | |
