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Tenor Kerem Kurk has been singing professionally from his days at the Manhattan School of Music in the studio of Patricia Misslin. In his final semester of 2002, he sang the title role in Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito under the baton of Julius Rudel in the Cathedral St. John the Divine in New York City.
Upon graduation, Mr. Kurk joined the International Opera Studio of the Zurich Opera, where he sang in various productions with renowned conductors Christoph von Dohnanyi and Marcello Viotti. The Neue Zuercher Zeitung called Kerem “a star of tomorrow” in their review of the 2002-2003 season’s closing concert where he sang from the role of Don Ottavio from Don Giovanni. While in Switzerland, Mr. Kurk studied privately with Nicolai Gedda.
Mr. Kurk’s performance of Belmonte in the Entführung aus dem Serail at the Bad Hersfeld Festival in Germany was praised in the November 2003 issue of Opernwelt magazine as a “first-rate Mozart tenor with a highly-cultivated legato.” He will be Almaviva in Il barbiere di Siviglia at the 2010 Alden Biesen Festival.
Following a workshop in Zurich with director Peter Konwitschny of his now-famous production of Don Giovanni, Mr. Kurk was invited to the Komische Oper Berlin to sing Oronte in their production of Alcina directed by David Alden and conducted by Paul McCreesh. He returned to Berlin for the following season’s revival, and created the tenor role in the world-premiere staging of the recently discovered Telemann opera Pastorelle.
Early career performances by Mr. Kurk include Alfredo in La traviata in Hildesheim, Cassio in Otello in Kaiserslautern, and Scaramuccio in Ariadne auf Naxos at the Aldeburgh Festival. He continued building his repertoire as a guest artist at the CU Opera in Colorado where he was heard as Peter Quint in A Turn of the Screw, Ferrando in Cosí fan tutte, Jupiter in Semele, and Chevalier in Les Dialogues des Carmélites.
Mr. Kurk appears regularly with the Boston Baroque, most recently in the Messiah, for which the Boston Globe noted his “sweet voiced, clarion tenor.” This season he will be heard with the ensemble in the Bach Magnificat at the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico, and later in Boston in Michael Haydn’s Requiem in c minor. He made his Belgian debut in Bach's Mass in b minor with the Charlemagne Orchestra and the Brussels Choral Society in 2009 at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels.
This past season Mr. Kurk returned to Germany to sing Alfredo in La traviata, Eisenstein in Die Fledermaus and a series of gala concerts of Italian opera at the Ostseefestspiele on the Baltic Coast of Germany where his renditions of arias and ensembles as Don Ottavio, Rodolfo, Edgardo and Ruggiero met with great critical acclaim. For the upcoming 2011-2012 season he will return to Germany for the title roles in The Rake’s Progress and Idomeneo, will be Lenski in Eugene Onegin, and will be heard in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.
August 2011 - Please destroy any previously released version