Biography

Peter Bernhard studied Music and Theatre at the Conservatory of Bern in Switzerland. Subsequently, he was coached by KS Nicolai Gedda for four years on a weekly base, where he was able to profit from the singer’s large experience. For the past four years, Peter Bernhard was working with the conductors Marc Tardue and Giuliano Betta as well as the mezzo-soprano Larissa Schmidt as his vocal coach. Since March 2017 he‘s completing the italian coaching with Massimo Morelli (Lucca), Andrea del Bianco and Enrico Maria Cacciari (Opera Zurich). At the same time, he changed his voice from lyric tenor to lirico-spinto/spinto tenor.

He sang at the Oper Köln, at the Stadttheater Basel, at the Theatres of Augsburg (permanently for four years), Regensburg, St. Gallen, Luzern, Biel-Solothurn (permanently for three years) and at different summer festivals such as the Classic Openair in Solothurn (2001, 2007), the Opernfestspiele Heidenheim (2008 – 2010), at the Musik und Theater Saar near Saarbrücken and four times at the Operette Leuk. In 2005 he was on tour through Germany with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and gave concerts in Cologne, Nuremberg, Frankfurt and Bremen. The last years he travelled as a freelancer in Argentina (Buenos Aires), Italy (Florence, Lucca, Rovigo), in Spain and Mallorca and in Norway by the West Norwegian Opera Bergen. He has a large repertory of various main parts such as Otello, Radamès, Manrico, Duke of Mantova, Cavaradossi, Turiddu, Don José, Hoffmann, Roméo, Tamino, Max and many others as well as operetta parts like Tassilo, Fedja Palinski, Edwin, Barinkay, Duke of Urbino and Eisenstein and many others.

Peter Bernhard was singing with conductors such as Helge Dorsch, Anthony Inglis, Robin Stapleton (Covent Garden), Mario Venzago, Giuliano Betta, Marc Tardue, Mark Foster, Henrik Nánási, Theodor Guschlbauer, Jürg Henneberger, Thomas Kalb and Jos Meier as well as renowned stage directors like Giancarlo del Monaco, Anette Leistenschneider, Hans Neuenfels, Andreas Baesler, Bruno Berger-Gorski, Thomas Wünsch, Pavel Fieber, Jasmin Solfaghari, Frank B. Gottschalk, Thilo Reinhardt and Dr. Ulrich Peters.

In the year 2007 Peter Bernhard founded the Oper Schenkenberg in Switzerland. He leaded it very successfully as its director for ten years and managed it to three big successes (2010 Carmen, 2013 Il Trovatore, 2016 Rigoletto) with great reviews from the Opernglas, the Opernwelt, the Wiener Merker, the Opera Milano and the Opera Magazine at Amsterdam as well as all the renowned Swiss Daily Papers like the NZZ, the Tagesanzeiger, the Basler Zeitung and the AZ-Medien AG as well as the Schweizer Fernsehen SRF.

Besides his vocal and musical abilities, he impressed the audience by his acting skills. His intensity and his willingness to go to extremes are always appreciated by the stage directors and very welcome by the audience. Peter Bernhard speaks perfect high German as well as English, Italian and French without any accent. He also has a knowledge of Spanish.

- Four years at the Conservatory of Music and Theatre in Bern
- Four years of Vocal and Opera Studies with KS Nicolai Gedda, Morges
- Several years of musical coaching by Rainer Altorfer and Rolando Garza, Basel
- Two years of vocal coaching by Ion Buzea, Zürich
- Five years of coaching by Mrs Mária Alföldi, Budapest
- Four years of coaching by Marc Tardue (USA)
- Since March 2014 coaching by Larissa Schmidt (Kazakhstan)
- Since May 2018 coached by Massimo Morelli (Lucca, Italia)
- Since March 2017 coached by Enrico Maria Cacciari and Andrea Del Bianco (Opera Zurich)