Andreas Scholl

Andreas Scholl ranks among the most prominent interpreters of the countertenor voice, specializing in the alto register for male singers. His primary focus remains Baroque opera and concert repertoire, although later phases of his career have encompassed an extensive range of works from other eras, including pieces never conceived for countertenor performance.

Born on November 10, 1967, in Eltville along the Rhine in what was then West Germany, Scholl spent his formative years in the nearby town of Kiedrich. There his father led a boys’ choir in which Andreas and his two siblings participated. As a youngster he delivered a solo at a choral event in Rome and encountered Pope John Paul II. Following the natural change in his voice, he discovered he could still execute the soprano lines he knew, prompting a vocal coach to identify his potential as a countertenor. Scholl began studying early recordings by pioneers such as Alfred Deller and James Bowman. During adolescence he performed in a rock band, yet ultimately committed to early music and entered the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland, in 1987. His teachers included René Jacobs and Richard Levitt. As his studies neared completion in 1993, the indisposed Jacobs recommended him as a substitute for an engagement at the Théâtre de Grévin in Paris—an opportunity that rapidly elevated his profile through enthusiastic critical response. Scholl subsequently joined Jacobs for a live broadcast of Bach’s St. John Passion, BWV 245. On the return journey that evening he met conductor William Christie, who had listened to the transmission and promptly engaged him for the alto solo in an upcoming recording of Handel’s Messiah, HWV 56, with Les Arts Florissants. Scholl’s first commercial release appeared in 1994 on the Naïve label: a collection of Bach cantatas performed with the Ensemble Baroque de Limoges under Christophe Coin.

Thereafter his engagements multiplied swiftly. Initially centered on concert works alongside Europe’s foremost historically informed ensembles, his activities broadened in 1998 when he took the role of Bertarido in Handel’s opera Rodelinda, HWV 19. Since that time he has maintained a dual presence in opera houses and concert halls. He performed the same part at the Metropolitan Opera in 2006 alongside Renée Fleming and returned to the company in 2011. In 2008 he appeared with the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall in Handel’s Messiah. Leading early-music conductors across Germany, France, and Britain—among them John Eliot Gardiner, Christophe Rousset, and Konrad Junghänel—have collaborated with him repeatedly.

Scholl’s discography stands out for its breadth and stylistic range, developed chiefly through associations with Harmonia Mundi, Naïve, and Decca. In 2007 he transferred to Sony BMG for the album Andreas Scholl Goes Pop, which reflected his interest in electronic textures, original pop compositions, and popular repertoire at large. Beyond his core Baroque focus he has explored such uncommon terrain as the songs of medieval German poet and singer Oswald von Wolkenstein, lieder by Mozart, Schubert, and Brahms on the 2012 release Wanderer, and twentieth-century vocal works with pianist and spouse Tamar Halperin on the 2019 album Twilight People. By then he had attained near-superstar recognition within the countertenor field, and his schedule showed no sign of diminishing. Early in the 2020s he joined the Aparte label, issuing several recordings there, one of which centered largely on music by twentieth-century composer Leo Brouwer. He returned to Naïve in 2024 with Invocazioni Mariane, a program of eighteenth-century Neapolitan sacred music.