ALFRED REITER (Sarastro) was born in Augsburg, Germany. He began his music studies with sacred music before he went on to study voice at the Munich Music Academy, continued his studies later with Astrid Varnay, and worked with Hans Hotter. In 1993 he was first-prize winner of the Richard Strauss Society in Munich.

Upon attending the Opernstudio of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, Alfred Reiter started his career in Wiesbaden and Nürnberg, where he sang Sarastro (Die Zauberflöte), Sparafucile (Rigoletto), Fafner (Das Rheingold), Seneca (L'incoronazione di Poppea), Rocco (Fidelio), and Pogner in Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
After his debut in 1999, Alfred Reiter sang Titurel (Parsifal) with Giuseppe Sinopoli, Christoph Eschenbach, and Christian Thielemann for three consecutive seasons at the Bayreuth Festival. Under Simon Rattle he made his debut with the same role at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden.

Important appearances include Seneca in Stuttgart, Rheingold (Fafner) with Jun Märkl at the Vienna State Opera, and Siegfried (Fafner) with Armin Jordan in Geneva and with Christoph von Dohnányi in Cleveland. It was in the role of Sarastro that Reiter made important and successful debuts at the Ludwigsburg Festival, the Salzburg Festival, with Sir Charles Mackerras at the Glyndebourne Festival, with Sir Colin Davis at the Festival de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, with Philippe Jordan in London, in Vienna, Berlin, Munich, Paris, Bologna, and Tokyo, and with the production from the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence in Lisbon, Caen, and Rouen.

In September 2002 Alfred Reiter made his U.S. debut as Timur in Turandot in San Francisco. In September 2003 the artist made a much-acclaimed debut as Gurnemanz at the Welsh National Opera, a role he sang again with Armin Jordan in April 2004 in Geneva and in 2006 with Ulf Schirmer in Leipzig. With Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra he sang his first Hunding (Die Walküre) in Brussels, London, and Budapest, and again with Daniel Harding in Vichy, Paris, and Valencia. In Bologna and Rome he sang Rocco in Fidelio and in Leonore, and he made his debut as König Marke in Geneva's new Tristan und Isolde in February 2005. At the Teatro Real in Madrid he sang Commendatore in a new Don Giovanni and in October 2005 Daland in Wagner's Flying Dutchman at the Opera La Monnaie in Brussels.

Alfred Reiter's versatile concert repertory includes Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, the Requiems of Mozart and Verdi, as well as The Creation by Haydn. He has performed with Christoph Eschenbach in Hamburg and London, with Myung-Whun Chung in Bergamo and Brescia, with Wolfgang Sawallisch in Philadelphia, New York, and Munich, with Jeffrey Tate in Berlin, with Frans Brüggen and Howard Griffiths in Zurich, with Ivor Bolton in Salzburg, with Stefan Soltesz in London, and with Franz Welser-Möst in Munich, with Christoph von Dohnányi in Los Angeles.

Current projects include Sarastro (Die Zauberflöte) in Geneva, Berlin, Brussels, and in the USA (Hollywood Bowl), König Marke (Tristan und Isolde) at the Welsh National Opera, Fafner in Rheingold and Siegfried with Simon Rattle in Aix-en-Provence, Berlin, and at the Salzburg Easter Festival, Fafner with Jonathan Nott at the Lucerne Festival 2007 and in Bamberg, Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor in Munich, concerts with Ingo Metzmacher in Berlin, Tommaso in Tiefland in Barcelona, Bruckner's F-minor Mass with Philippe Herreweghe, and a recording for Harmonia Mundi.

06/07