Biography

Making music came as naturally to Andrè Schuen as speech. The baritone, raised in a family of multilingual musicians, communicates as fluently with melody as he does in German, Italian and Ladin, the regional tongue of the part of the South Tyrol in which he was born. His repertoire embraces everything from Lieder and opera to traditional Ladin folk music and spans the spectrum of human emotions. Above all, it reflects the singer’s passion for words and his determination to convey their meaning in performance.

Critics have been inspired by Schuen’s combination of vocal authority, tonal warmth and expressive intelligence. “This dark, unstrained baritone is one of the most beautiful things you can hear at the moment; it is an unreservedly wonderful voice,” observed the Frankfurter Rundschau, while Gramophone has praised his enormous expressive range and ability to spin “long, quiet lines that flow with consummate ease”.

Having signed an exclusive agreement with Deutsche Grammophon, Andrè Schuen released his DG debut album, a performance of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin recorded with pianist Daniel Heide, in March 2021. Reviewing the album, The Sunday Times praised Schuen’s “emotional truthfulness”.

Schuen followed this success with a recording of Schubert’s final collection of songs, Schwanengesang, again with his longstanding duo partner Daniel Heide. Schwanengesang was released to great acclaim in November 2022, with Gramophone hailing the singer’s “fresh, beautifully contoured baritone, deployed with breath control that allows him to sail into long vocal lines with an illuminating sense of long-term musical direction, plus telling articulation of text”. The album was honoured with a 2023 Opus Klassik award in the Solo Song category.

Completing the trilogy of Schubert’s major song cycles, Schuen and Heide then made an equally enthusiastically received recording of Winterreise (“singer and pianist intelligently trace the cycle’s dramatic arc by becoming the character, and sustain that with smart underlying strategy” – Gramophone). Released by DG in May 2024, the recording also formed the soundtrack for the live-action/animation feature film A Winter’s Journey, directed by Alex Helfrecht and starring John Malkovich, Marcin Czarnik and Jason Isaacs, among others.

The singer’s latest release sees him fulfil his long-held dream of making a Mozart album. Recorded with the Mozarteumorchester and its Chief Conductor Roberto González-Monjas, Mozart presents excerpts from Le nozze di Figaro, Die Zauberflöte and Don Giovanni, including three duets in which Schuen is joined by soprano Nikola Hillebrand. The album also features works with piano accompaniment, provided by Daniel Heide, and “Komm, liebe Zither”, in which Schuen teams up with mandolinist and fellow DG artist Avi Avital. Mozart is set for release on 4 July 2025.

This summer, Schuen stars in the title role of the Aix-en-Provence Festival’s new production of Don Giovanni, directed by Robert Icke and conducted by Sir Simon Rattle (4–18 July 2025). With Heide, he performs a programme of works by R. Strauss, Wagner and Zemlinsky at the Schloss Ettersburg, Weimar (13 August), as well as at the Salzburg Festival (16 August), Herbstgold Festival (Schloss Esterházy, 19 September) and Amsterdam Concertgebouw (23 September). The duo also perform Winterreise at Copenhagen’s Tivoli Concert Hall (19 August). In November, Schuen will play the role of Ford in Mario Martone’s production of Verdi’s Falstaff at the Berlin Staatsoper.

Born in 1984 in La Val, South Tyrol, Andrè Schuen studied cello as a child, as well as playing and singing Ladin folk music as part of a family ensemble that also included his mother, father, two sisters and a cousin. He later switched his focus to singing and won a place at the Salzburg Mozarteum where he studied with the Romanian soprano Horiana Brănişteanu and received lessons in Lieder and oratorio from fellow baritone Wolfgang Holzmair. His formative training also included masterclass sessions with, among others, Kurt Widmer, Sir Thomas Allen, Brigitte Fassbaender, Marjana Lipovšek and Olaf Bär.

In 2009 Schuen appeared as singer and actor at the Salzburg Festival in Luigi Nono’s Al gran sole carico d’amore and, the following year, joined the festival’s Young Singers Project. After graduating with distinction in 2010, he spent four years as a member of Graz Opera, and made his debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle in 2011. He earned critical acclaim as one of the few performers to appear throughout Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s 2014 cycle of Mozart’s Da Ponte operas at the Theater an der Wien, for which he sang the roles of Figaro, Don Giovanni and Guglielmo. He made his US debut in 2017, giving recitals with Thomas Adès at the Tanglewood Festival and with Andreas Haefliger at the Aspen Music Festival. His partnership with Daniel Heide has flourished in concert as well as on disc, including regular appearances at the Schubertiade in Hohenems and Schwarzenberg.

5/2025