Season highlights
Title Role in Bluebeard’s Castle
Concerto Budapest
Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Festival d'Aix-en-Provence at the Beijing Music Festival
Claggart in Billy Budd
Bolshoi Theatre of Russia
Villains in Les contes d’Hoffman
Royal Danish Opera
Claggart in Billy Budd
Deutsche Oper Berlin
Roles/repertoire
Bartók
Title role Duke Bluebeard's Castle
Berlioz
Mephisto La Damnation de Faust
Beethoven
Pizarro Fidelio
Britten
Claggart Billy Budd
Bottom A Midsummer Night's Dream
Traveller / Elderly Fop / Old Gondolier / Hotel Manager / Hotel Barber / Leader of the Players / Voice of Dionysus Death in Venice
Donizetti
Enrico Anna Bolena
Gounod
Mephistopholes Faust
Mozart
Title role / Leporello Don Giovanni
Title role / Almaviva La nozze di Figaro
Don Alfonso Così fan tutte
Papageno Die Zauberflöte
Massenet
Title role Don Quichotte
Monteverdi
Seneca L'incoronazione di Poppea
Mussorgsky
Title role Boris Gudonov
Offenbach
Nemeses Les contes d'Hoffman
Puccini
Scarpia Tosca
Reimann, A
King of France Lear
Smetana
Kecal The Bartered Bride
Sondheim
Title role Sweeney Todd
Strauss, R.
Orest Elektra
La Roche Capriccio
Stravinsky
Nick Shadow The Rake's Progress
Verdi
Filippo Don Carlo
Fiesco Simon Boccanegra
Wurm Luisa Miller
Title role Attila
Title role Falstaff
Wagner
Fasolt Das Rheingold
Hagen Götterdämmerung
Heinrich der Vogler Lohengrin
Gurnemanz Parsifal
King Marke Tristan und Isolde
Weber
Kaspar Der Freischütz
Zemlinsky
Gyges Der König Kandaules
OperaThe Master-at-Arms was sung by Gidon Saks with a terrifying, pitch-black voice that was nevertheless capable of a wealth of nuance.
Washington PostHe’s a brilliant artist. He’s a stage animal. He’s naturally theatrical... he showed a mind-boggling range of styles, from full-bore operatic plumminess to idiomatic mastery of American musical genres. He also has good looks, charisma and a rich voice that can buffet you with gravelly thunder but that he can also scale down to a wistful thread ...he showed that he can easily handle the upper register...