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Countertenor

Etienne Walch

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The young countertenor Etienne Walch grew up in Kaltennordheim, Thuringia, and received his basic musical education in the special music classes of the Rutheneum in Gera. The young countertenor won numerous competitions while he was still at school, including first prize in the national competition Jugend musiziert in the solo singing category. In 2011 he received a scholarship from the Free State of Thuringia for musically gifted children and young people.

Etienne studied singing/music theater and opera singing at the University of Music and Theater “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” in Leipzig with Prof. Christina Wartenberg. He began his master class studies in autumn 2019 with Prof. Ilse-Christine Otto there.

From the 2019/2020 season to January 2022, Etienne was a member of the ensemble at the Opernstudio NRW, where he sang at the Dortmund Opera (longing - a baroque pasticcio) , the Musiktheater im Revier Gelsenkirchen (Tolomeo in Handel's Giulio Cesare; Terzo Pastore in Monteverdi's L ' Orfeo, Vater in Jauchzet, Freudet, as well as the moon in Ponsioen's "Perô or the Secrets of the Night) and the Oper Wuppertal (Tolomeo in Giulio Cesare in Egitto). In the coming season, Etienne will make his debut at the Aalto Theater in Essen as Bill Henson in Gordon Kampe's world premiere of "Dogville" (based on the film of the same name by Lars von Trier) and will be seen at the Handel Festival in Halle. Numerous concerts and a CD recording of Telemann's cantatas are also on the agenda.

Earlier engagements as a soloist have taken him to the Altenburg Gera Theater, the Nordhausen Theater, the Oldenburg State Theater and the Dessau Theater in Anhalt.

In addition to his busy concert schedule, including the Thuringian Bach Festival, the Leipzig Bach Festival and the Munich Festival "Stars and Rising Stars" with Simone Kermes, Etienne can be heard primarily in operas. In 2014 he made his operatic debut as Artaxerxes in Lady Mary Stuart's rediscovered play The Honor of Arbaces. He was also heard as "Conferencier" (new version of G.Puccini's "La Boheme"), "Pferdeknecht" and "Die Dombrowska" in the Hans Werner Henze operas "A Country Doctor" and "The End of a World". In 2017, the young countertenor interpreted, among other things, the role of "Melanchton" in the world premiere of the opera "Alesius" and "Cupido" in Johann Sebastiani's "Pastorello musicale - Verliebtes Schäferspiel".

He received inspiration for his work from directors such as Andreas Rosar, Rahel Thiel, Matthias Oldag, Immo Karaman and Michael Schulz, as well as Dietrich Hilsdorf from working as a cover for Xavier Sabata in the production "Il primo omicidio" at the Aalto Theater Essen. He was also able to gain valuable experience working with the young directors Toni Burghard Friedrich and Maurice Lenhard. He received further artistic inspiration from master classes at the international Handel Academy in Karlsruhe, from Philippe Jaroussky, Simone Kermes, George Petrou, KS Bo Skovhus, Johannes Martin Kränzle, Felice Venanzoni, Tobias Truniger, Edith Wiens, as well as from coaching sessions with Xavier Sabata.

He has worked with orchestras such as the Leipzig Baroque Orchestra, the Rosenmüller Ensemble and the orchestras of the Nordhausen, Dessau, Oldenburg, Wuppertal, Dortmund and Gelsenkirchen theaters, singing as a soloist in places such as the Frauenkirche in Dresden, the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, the Berlin Philharmonic and the Essen Philharmonic , the Theater Nordhausen, the Anhaltisches Theater Dessau, as well as the Oldenburgisches Staatstheater and the opera houses in Dortmund, Essen, Gelsenkirchen and Wuppertal under conductors such as Henning Ehlert, Clemens Flick, Alexis Kossenko, Philipp Armbruster, Giuliano Betta, Prof. Matthias Foremny and GMD Markus L Frank.

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