Benjamin Bruns began his singing career as an alto soloist in the boys' choir of his hometown, Hanover. After four years of private vocal training with Prof. Peter Sefcik, he studied at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg under the tutelage of Kammersängerin Renate Behle. While still a student, he was offered his first permanent engagement by the Bremer Theater, which allowed him to build a broad repertoire early on and was soon followed by an ensemble contract at the Cologne Opera. His journey then took him via the Saxon State Opera Dresden directly to the Vienna State Opera, where he was a member of the ensemble from 2010 to 2020.

His stylistically diverse repertoire includes Mozart roles such as Belmonte (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), Tamino (Die Zauberflöte), and Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni), as well as roles like Fenton (Falstaff), Camille de Rosillon (Die lustige Witwe), Lysander (Britten: A Midsummer Night's Dream), Don Ramiro (La Cenerentola), Boris Grigorievich (Janáček: Kátia Kabanová), or the Italian Tenor in the two Strauss operas Capriccio and Der Rosenkavalier. With Wagner roles such as Lohengrin, Loge (Das Rheingold), Erik (Der fliegende Holländer), and Siegmund (Die Walküre), Max in Weber’s Der Freischütz, the Emperor in Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten, and Florestan in Beethoven's Fidelio, Benjamin Bruns has successfully transitioned into the youthful dramatic repertoire.

In the 2024/25 season, the tenor will again be on stage at the Bavarian State Opera as Piet vom Fass in Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre as well as Erik in Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer. He will also be heard in this role in a concert performance under the baton of Jaap van Zweden at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam.

As role debuts, Benjamin Bruns will sing the title role in Parsifal for the first time at the Hamburg State Opera, and in Tokyo, he will perform the Drum Major in Berg’s Wozzeck in concert.

Oratorio and art song form an important counterbalance to his stage work. The focus of his extensive concert repertoire is on the major sacred works by Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, and Mendelssohn. In this repertoire, he has performed with all major German orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig, and the Academy for Ancient Music Berlin, as well as with renowned international orchestras such as the Vienna Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Bach Collegium Japan, the Czech Philharmonic, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, and the choir and orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome.

The 2024/25 concert season offers exciting projects that showcase the full breadth of Benjamin Bruns' repertoire: in addition to the aforementioned concert performances of Der fliegende Holländer and Wozzeck, he will perform Bruckner's Mass in F minor under the baton of Thomas Hengelbrock in Munich and St. Florian, Haydn's The Creation in Paris, and Mendelssohn's Lobgesang under the baton of Masaaki Suzuki in Tokyo. He will also perform all six cantatas of Bach's Christmas Oratorio under the baton of Patrick Hahn in Munich. In Vienna, he will appear in Beethoven's 9th Symphony under the baton of Marie Jacquot and in a concert version of Strauss’s operetta Carnival in Rome, again under the baton of Patrick Hahn. With the Berlin Philharmonic under the baton of Daniel Barenboim, he will perform in Berlin and Amsterdam (Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde). Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 is also scheduled three times: in Vienna under the baton of Philippe Jordan, in Bremen under the baton of Marko Letonja, and in Stuttgart under the baton of Cornelius Meister.

Benjamin Bruns is a prizewinner of the Bundeswettbewerb Gesang Berlin, the Hamburg Mozart Competition, and the International Singing Competition of the Chamber Opera Schloss Rheinsberg. He has also been honored with the Kurt Hübner Prize of the Theater Bremen and the Young Artist Award of the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival.

His song CDs Dichterliebe (featuring Schumann's Dichterliebe and Der arme Peter, Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte, and Hugo Wolf's Liederstrauß) and Winterreise, both with Karola Theill on piano, have been highly praised and awarded by the press. Recently, a new recording of Haydn's The Creation under the baton of Marek Janowski was released by Pentatone.

For more information, please visit the artist's website: www.benjaminbruns.de