Michael Robert-Broder, baritone – Native to Vancouver, Michael Robert-Broder has established himself as one of Canada’s most versatile young baritones. Equally at home with art song, oratorio, and opera, he has gained a reputation for engaging performances that perfectly join poet’s text with composer’s music, with the dramatic essence of a piece.

Oratorio performances include Requiems by Mozart, Fauré, and Duruflé, major works by J.S. Bach, Handel’s Dixit Dominus and Israel in Egypt that found him in “a rich, mature voice.” (Georgia Straight).

As a strong advocate of contemporary music, Michael has been invited to première a number of pieces in the past year. Among them was Cameron Wilson’s The Oratorio to end all Oratorios, the role of The Jester in George Austin’s The King Who Wouldn’t Sing, and a concert of excerpts from Timothy-Benton Roark’s dramatic cantata based on the writings of W.B. Yeats, Crazy Jane. Michael has presented recitals of staged “non-dramatic” works, which have included scenes from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, using the art songs of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, and Wolf.

On the lyric stage, Robert-Broder has recently portrayed the roles of l’hotelier, and un marchant d’elixir in Massenet’s Manon, Sprecher in Mozart’s masterpiece Die Zauberflöte, Bob in Menotti’s The Old Maid and the Thief, Ben in Menotti’s The Telephone, and Il Conte in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro.

Michael’s principle training has been under the guidance of Bruce Pullan, and Gary Relyea. Upcoming engagements include Donizetti’s Don Pasquale and L’elisir d’amore, Bach’s Johannes-Passion, Brahms’s German Requiem, Schubert’s Schwanengesang and Die Schöne Müllerin, Handel’s Athalia and several recitals of German, French and American Cabaret music.