Dangerous Don Debuts in Salzburg

Christopher Maltman is currently enjoying the success of a lifetime in the title role of the Salzburg Festival’s new production of ‘Don Giovanni’. His performances have been rapturously received by audiences and critically acclaimed in the world's press. Bloomberg commented that ‘Christopher Maltman's dramatic achievement as the dying hero is breathtaking, a performance at least as remarkable for its athleticism as for its intelligent lyricism’. The Financial Times thought his 'voice was honeyed' with 'presence and a permanent gleam' while the Abend Zeitung simply called his performance ‘magnificent’.

Maltman's triumph is all the more noteworthy as he is the first British baritone to sing this extraordinarily challenging role at this extraordinarily challenging Austrian address. His Mozart credentials are well established: at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden he has sung Papageno, Guglielmo and Nardo; at the Glyndebourne Festival his roles have included Papageno and Figaro and in Vienna he recently made an acclaimed debut as Count Almaviva. In The United States he has sung Papageno in San Francisco and he is shortly to sing the eponymous bird catcher at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Maltman has said that 'Don Giovanni' 'is an opera I love - in fact, it's the first one I ever saw'. He has sung it only once before, in a production directed by Sir Thomas Allen, one of the world's most famous exponants of the role. Preparing with the work with Allen, says Maltman, was 'the chance of a lifetime'. The experience has stood him in good stead and, if the reaction of the notoriously critical Salzburg Festival audiences is anything to go by, it is now a role Maltman has made very much his own.

Photo Credit: Monika Rittershaus

13 August, 2008

View more information relating to

Christopher Maltman

Contact: Keiron Cooke or Rebecca Sackman