Biography
Baritone Thomas Gropper maintains an active presence across opera and oratorio while expanding his work as a choral director and vocal instructor, all alongside his substantial role in music education. Born in 1969 in Braunlage within West Germany’s Lower Saxony, he pursued studies in singing and vocal pedagogy at Munich’s Hochschule für Musik und Theater under Markus Goritzky and received additional instruction in Berlin from Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Early on he concentrated on performance and pedagogy, joining the faculty of his alma mater in 1997 and advancing to full professor in 2001. He took part in several Mozart productions and appeared at Stadttheater Ingolstadt in Simon Mayr’s rarely staged Che Originali; his first recording, made that same year with the Georgisches Kammerorchester Ingolstadt, captured that very opera. In 2007 he portrayed the title character in Monteverdi’s Orfeo at the ruined Hersfeld Abbey in Bad Hersfeld.
Although oratorio has formed the core of his singing career, encompassing leading parts from Monteverdi through Benjamin Britten, Gropper later shifted greater attention toward conducting. He leads the chamber choir Arcis-Vocalisten München on frequent tours and served as conductor of the Fürstenfeld Philharmonic Choir from 2008 until 2014. He subsequently assumed artistic direction of the Birnauer Kantorei and oversees a series of sacred-music events in Birnau. As a voice coach he has prepared several prominent German ensembles and readied choruses for live performances drawn from the soundtracks of The Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean. In 2011 Gropper and Arcis-Vocalisten München began a continuing collaboration with Oehms Classics that opened with an album of Bach cantatas; subsequent releases on the label have included further Bach, works by Carl Heinrich Graun, and, in 2023, Carl Loewe’s Jan Hus Oratorium, Op. 82, which received its first recording under Gropper’s direction.
Although oratorio has formed the core of his singing career, encompassing leading parts from Monteverdi through Benjamin Britten, Gropper later shifted greater attention toward conducting. He leads the chamber choir Arcis-Vocalisten München on frequent tours and served as conductor of the Fürstenfeld Philharmonic Choir from 2008 until 2014. He subsequently assumed artistic direction of the Birnauer Kantorei and oversees a series of sacred-music events in Birnau. As a voice coach he has prepared several prominent German ensembles and readied choruses for live performances drawn from the soundtracks of The Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean. In 2011 Gropper and Arcis-Vocalisten München began a continuing collaboration with Oehms Classics that opened with an album of Bach cantatas; subsequent releases on the label have included further Bach, works by Carl Heinrich Graun, and, in 2023, Carl Loewe’s Jan Hus Oratorium, Op. 82, which received its first recording under Gropper’s direction.
Albums
