The Austrian bass Albert Pesendorfer studied singing and flute at the Bruckner University in Linz and at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. From 2002 to 2005 he held a full-time engagement at the theatre in Erfurt, during the 2005/2006 season at the Tyrolean State Theatre in Innsbruck and from 2006 to 2011 at the State Opera in Hanover. In 2012 he joined the company of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, where he sang until 2016.
Since then, among the places where he has performed are the Vienna State Opera, the Hamburg State Opera, the Cologne Opera, the National Opera in Tokyo, the Zurich Opernhaus, the Teatro Real in Madrid, the Semperoper in Dresden, the Theater an der Wien, and the Flemish Opera in Antwerp. He has performed at important opera festivals including an appearance in the summer of 2014 in Bregenz as Sarastro and in 2016 in Bayreuth as Hagen in Wagner’s Götterdämmerung under the baton of Marek Janowski. He excelled in the same role with enormous success at the Vienna State Opera under the baton of Ádám Fischer.
Albert Pesendorfer’s repertoire encompasses more than seventy roles including Hans Sachs (Die Meistersinger), Gurnemanz (Parsifal), Fasolt (Rheingold), Hunding (Die Walküre), Hagen (Götterdämmerung), King Mark (Tristan und Isolde), King Heinrich (Lohengrin), Osmin (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), Rocco (Fidelio), Sparafucile (Rigoletto), Philip II (Don Carlos), and Banquo (Macbeth). In 2011 the journal Opernwelt nominated him for the title of Singer of the Year for his portrayals of the roles of Hunding and Hagen at the Hanover State Opera.
Concert performances have taken Albert Pesendorfer to the Musikverein and the Konzerthaus in Vienna, the Musikpalast in Budapest, the Brucknerhaus in Linz, the Philharmonie in Berlin, London’s Barbican Hall, Japan, the United States, and elsewhere. His debut with the Czech Philharmonic also belongs on this list.
Since the winter semester of 2015, Albert Pesendorfer has been a professor of singing at the Universität der Künste in Berlin.
He can now be heard at the Vienna Volksoper as Timur (Turandot), Hemit (Der Freischütz), and Sarastro (Die Zauberflöte), and he has enjoyed especially great success as Sebastian Kundrather in the opera Kehraus um St. Stephan by Ernst Krenek.
During the 2019/2020 season, Pesendorfer is returning to the title role in Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov at the Vienna Volksoper.