Kurt Link
A winner of the Metropolitan Opera, Liederkranz, Opera Index and Sullivan Foundation competitions and featured by Opera News as a singer to “Keep your eye on,” Kurt Link has earned a reputation as one of America’s finest basses, both in opera and oratorio.
In a full-time soloist career that has spanned more than 35 years, Mr. Link has won
critical acclaim for a repertoire which has embraced major operatic roles from
Monteverdi to Henze, and from Mozart to Wagner. He has sung Baron Ochs, Daland, Figaro, Leporello, Osmin, Basilio, Sarastro, Ramfis, Colline, Mephistopheles, and many other major bass roles with the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, La Monnaie (Brussels), Santa Fe Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Washington Opera, Dublin Grand Opera, Florida Grand Opera, Canadian Opera Company, Atlanta Opera, New Israeli Opera, the opera companies of Portland, Minnesota, Michigan, St. Louis, Utah, Arizona, Edmonton and the opera festivals of Chautauqua, Wexford (Ireland), Hong Kong, Wolf Trap, Glimmerglass and Spoleto (USA and Italy).
He has toured with the Metropolitan Opera to Japan, with the New York City Opera on their US National Tour, and NYCO’s China Tour, as well as a European tour with the Dallas Symphony Chorus as soloist in Mozart’s Requiem Mass.
He is very much at home in symphonic works, and has sung The Creation, St. Matthew Passion, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, the Requiem Masses of Verdi, Mozart and Fauré, Bach’s Mass in b minor, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and many other works with the orchestras of Chicago, Philadelphia, Montreal, Baltimore, Tokyo, St. Louis, Atlanta, Florida, Israel, Minneapolis, Denver, San Diego, Indianapolis, Louisville, Charleston, Phoenix, San Antonio, and Milwaukee as well as the festival orchestras of Spoleto, Aspen, Chautauqua, Finger Lakes, and Grant Park. Mr. Link has also sung several baroque works with New York’s Bach Aria Group and with Chicago’s Music of the Baroque. He has appeared as an orchestral soloist with such distinguished conductors as Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Charles Dutoit, Margaret Hillis, Erich Leinsdorf, Ricardo Muti, Eugene Ormandy, Leonard Slatkin, Sir Georg Solti, Edo de Waart, and
David Zinman.
In addition to several recordings on smaller labels, Mr. Link is heard on the Grammy Award winning Decca recording of Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Georg Solti.
As a voice professor, Kurt Link has taught at Lawrence University Conservatory of
Music, DePaul University, North Park University, and at Chicago College of Performing Arts. He has also served as Artist-In-Residence at Lawrence University.