The fervent and inconsistency-wracked warrior Mathô [in Modest Musorgsky’s opera Salammbô] was performed by young baritone Grigor Werner who has a dramatic eastern appearance. His sensitive timbre truly touched the audience and the auditorium erupted in ovations.
Sankt-Peterburgskiye vedomosti (“St Petersburg News”)
• Prize-winner at the 3rd Maxim Mikhailov International Competition for Young Opera Singers (Kaluga, 2013; 3rd prize)
• Diploma recipient at the 2nd International Sacred Music Choir Festival Musica Sacra a Roma (Rome, 2007)
• Prize-winner at the 9th Bella voce Open All-Russian Student Vocalists’ Competition (Moscow, 2001; 2nd prize)
Grigor Werner was born in Yerevan. In 2001 he graduated from Moscow’s Gnessin State Musical College, and in 2006 – from the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin. During 1999–2006 Grigor was a pupil and assistant of Professor Thomas Quasthoff. From 2003 to 2004 he also trained under the guidance of Robert Dumét at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris.
Since 2010 Grigor Werner has been a soloist with the Mariinsky Academy of Young Opera Singers (St Petersburg), and since 2018 he has also been a guest soloist at the Republic of North Ossetia–Alania Branch of the Mariinsky Theatre (Vladikavkaz). At the theatre – in St Petersburg – he made his debut in 2011, taking part in a concert performance of Weber’s Das Waldmädchen.
Repertoire at the Mariinsky Theatre:
Mathô (Musorgsky's Salammbô, concert performance)
Demon (The Demon, Republic of North Ossetia–Alania Branch)
Second Shipman (The Tale of Tsar Saltan)
Farfarello (The Love for Three Oranges)
Kazbich (Klinichev’s Bela, concert performance)
A Priest and a Man in Armour (Die Zauberflöte)
Marquis d’Obigny (La traviata)
A Flemish Deputy (Don Carlo)
Amonasro (Aida, Republic of North Ossetia–Alania Branch)
Tonio (Pagliacci, Republic of North Ossetia–Alania Branch)
Schaunard (La bohème)
Talpa (Il tabarro)
Prince from Vienna (Das Waldmädchen, concert performance)
The Music Master (Ariadne auf Naxos)
Spirit Messenger (Die Frau ohne Schatten)
Wagner (Gounod’s Faust)
Dancaïro (Carmen)
Second Philistine (Samson et Dalila, concert performance)
Quince (Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
In 2017 he performed the role of Ivan Zhuran in a Mariinsky Theatre production of The Enchantress at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples.
Has taken part in premieres of Mariinsky Theatre productions of Ariadne auf Naxos and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2011) as well as in the world premiere of Leonid Klinichev’s opera Bela, held at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre in 2014.
His repertoire also includes chamber music by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich, Bach, Mozart, Schumann and Brahms.
In 2005 Grigor Werner was invited to the Bayreuth Festival where he sang under the batons of Christian Thielemann and Pierre Boulez.