top of page

Biography

Tomáš

Král

baritone

© Barbara Dietl

Since 2005 baritone Tomáš Král has appeared with many of the best-known European ensembles, including Collegium Vocale Gent, La Venexiana, Vox Luminis, Holland Baroque, B’Rock Orchestra, Wrocław Baroque Orchestra, Collegium 1704, Collegium Marianum, and Musica Florea. He has performed at the Prague Spring Festival, the Dresdner and Salzburger Festspiele, the festivals of La Chaise-Dieu, Ambronay, and Sablé, and the Early Music Festivals in Bruges and Utrecht, while other venues have included the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Wigmore Hall, and BOZAR in Brussels.


His wide-ranging opera roles include Guglielmo (Cosi fan tutte), Ottokar (Der Freischütz), Uberto (La serva padrona), Giove (Cavalli La Calisto), Ernesto (Il mondo della luna), Apollo (Monteverdi Orfeo, Handel Apollo e Dafne), and the title-role in Suppe’s Boccaccio. He notably took part in the extraordinary staging of Bach’s St John Passion directed by Pierre Audi for Dutch National Opera, and of Mozart’s Requiem at the Kunstfestspiele Herrenhausen and Theater Giessen, where he also took the titlerole in a rare production of Telemann’s version of Handel’s Riccardo Primo.


In 2017 Tomáš was invited by the Halle Händel Festspiele to sing Polyphemus in Acis and Galatea, and during the 2017/18 season performed Purcell’s King Arthur at the Aldeburgh Festival, Bach‘s Christmas Oratorio at the Vienna Musikverein, B-minor Mass for Václav Luks at the Maison Symphonique in Montréal, Monteverdi’s Vespers with Gli Angeli Genève under Stephan MacLeod, Bach’s and Kuhnau’s Magnificat settings directed by Benjamin Bayl in Antwerp, Ghent, and The Hague, Clistene (Vivaldi L’Olimpiade) with Rinaldo Alessandrini, and Telemann’s Der Tag des Gerichts with Il Gardellino under Peter Van Heyghen. In a new collaboration with Raphaël Pichon and his Ensemble Pygmalion, he performed several of Bach’s Cantatas and the role of Jesus in the St John Passion in concerts throughout France.


He began the 2018/19 season with his role-début as Starek in Janacek’s Jenufa at the Opéra de Dijon, later revived at the Théâtre de Caen. Other highlights of the season included concert tours of Handel’s Israel in Egypt and the Bach’s B-minor mass with Václav Luks and his Collegium 1704 and Purcell’s Hail Bright Cecilia at the Konzerthaus in Vienna with Vincent Dumestre and Le Poème Harmonique. Tomáš started a new collaboration with the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne and the Ensemble Vocal de Lausanne, presenting some Bach Cantatas conducted by Raphael Pichon. He also pursued a vast concert tour with Dunedin Consort celebrating the work of Bach including the Matthäus-Passion conducted by Trevor Pinnock and other cantatas conducted by John Butt.


Subsequently, he renewed his collaborations with Raphael Pichon for different projects including a semi-staged Johannes-Passion in Krakow. He also sang concerts with Václav Luks in Moscow, Prague and Dresden and started collaborating with Christophe Rousset and the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra for some Bach concerts in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. He revived the programme Liebster Jesu with Les Muffatti with concerts in Riga and the Bozar in Brussels and he also collaborated with Bruce Dickey on a new Kepler programme.


In the 2021/22 season he sang many concert programmes with the Wroclaw Baroque Ensemble, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with Concerto Copenhagen under Lars Ulrik Mortensen and the Mattäus-Passion at the Kammermusiksaal in Berlin. Tomáš will also tour a new production of Handel’s Alcina with Collegium 1704 under Václav Luks (Brno, Versailles and Caen).


His many recordings include such rarities as the Missa Votiva and the Lamentationes Jeremiae Profetae by the great Bohemian master Jan Dismas Zelenka, a CD of rarities by the early baroque Polish composer Marcin Mielczewski, Bach’s Mass in B minor with Collegium 1704, and Leoš Janacek’s Moravian Folk Songs.

Continue your visit

bottom of page