Biography
Giorgos Kanaris was born in Athens and studied singing in Athens and Munich, where he was trained by Josef Metternich, Daphne Evangelatos and more at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich.
Since 2009, he has been a member of the Bonn Opera ensemble, where he has distinguished himself with a wide-ranging repertoire including roles such as Belcore (L’elisir d’amore), Don Giovanni (Don Giovanni), Count Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro), Guglielmo (Così fan tutte), Marcello (La Bohème), Papageno (The Magic Flute), Peter the Broom Maker (Hansel and Gretel), Mandryka (Arabella), and Sharpless (Madama Butterfly). He has received great acclaim for his interpretations of major Verdi roles such as Rigoletto, Renato (Un ballo in maschera), Giorgio Germont (La Traviata), Rodrigo di Posa (Don Carlo) and Don Carlo di Vargas (La Forza del destino).
Further highlights of his career include roles such as Baron Scarpia in Puccini’s Tosca (2023) and Onegin in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin (2024) at Theatre Bonn. In their 2025/2026 season, he will make his debut as Barak in Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten and in the world premiere of Awakening, directed by Vasily Barkhatov, as the Messenger of Sickness / A Priest in Fiery Robe at Theater Bonn. He will also be debuting the role of Lescaut in Puccini‘s Manon Lescaut at Theater Heidelberg.
Giorgos Kanaris has worked with renowned conductors such as Will Humburg, Dirk Kaftan, Nicholas Carter, Jacques Lacombe, Mino Marani, Hermes Helfricht and Stephan Zilias, as well as directors including Stephen Langridge, Jens-Daniel Herzog, Dietrich Hilsdorf, Philipp Himmelmann, Josef Ernst Köpplinger, Marco Arturo Marelli, Peter Konwitschny, Sir David Pountney, Silviu Purcărete, Roland Schwab, Friederike Blum and Aron Stiehl. Guest engagements have taken him to the Greek National Opera in Athens, the Margravial Opera House Bayreuth, Bühnen Bern, Theater Bremen, the Opera Houses in Dortmund, Essen, and Gelsenkirchen, Cairo Opera House, Stadttheater Klagenfurt, Theater Luzern, and Staatstheater Nürnberg.
He is also in great demand as a concert singer and has an extensive concert and oratorio repertoire ranging from Schumann, Debussy, Duparc, Ibert, Beethoven, Schubert, Pfitzner, and Ravel to Strauss and Carl Orff. In 2017, his recording Songs of Yearning – Sehnsuchtslieder, featuring songs by Schubert and Beethoven, was released on Hänssler Classic. This was followed in 2020 by another Hänssler Classic recording, Invitation au Voyage, featuring Don Quixote and French songs accompanied by Thomas Wise.
Internationally recognized, he received a special award in the Oratorio/Song category at the International Maria Callas Grand Prix in 2005 and was subsequently engaged for various concerts with Helmuth Rilling. He was a prize winner at the Schloss Laubach Competition in 2009. In 2010, he received the Prize of the Friends of the Bonn Opera, and in 2011 he was a scholarship holder of the Richard Wagner Association Bonn.
Opera
Repertoire
Beethoven, Ludwig van
Fidelio – Don Fernando
Bizet, Georges
Carmen – Escamillo
Cavalli, Francesco
La Calisto – Mercurio
Cimarosa, Domenico
Il matrimonio segreto – Conte Robinson
Delibes, Léo
Lakmé – Frédéric
Donizetti, Gaetano
L’elisir d’amore – Belcore
Lucia di Lammermoor – Enrico
Don Pasquale – Malatesta
Giordano, Umberto
Siberia – Gléby
Händel, Georg Friedrich
Rinaldo – Argante
Ezio – Massimo
Giulio Cesare – Achilla
Humperdinck, Engelbert
Hänsel und Gretel – Peter Besenbinder
Leoncavallo, Ruggiero
Pagliacci -Silvio
Lortzing, Albert
Der Wildschütz – Graf von Eberbach
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus
Così fan tutte – Guglielmo
Don Giovanni – Don Giovanni; Masetto
Die Zauberflöte – Papageno
La finta giardiniera – Nardo
Le Nozze di Figaro – Graf Almaviva
Nicolai, Otto
Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor – Herr Fluth
Puccini, Giacomo
La Bohème – Marcello; Schaunard
Madama Butterfly – Sharpless
Manon Lescaut – Lescaut
Tosca – Baron Scarpia
Turandot – Ping
Ravel, Maurice
L´heure espagnole – Ramiro
Rossini, Gioachino
Il barbiere di Siviglia – Figaro
L´italiana in Algeri – Taddeo
Schreker, Franz
Der ferne Klang – Ein Schmierenschauspieler
Strauss, Richard
Die Frau ohne Schatten – Barak
Arabella – Mandryka
Der Rosenkavalier – Herr von Faninal
Tschaikowski, Pyotr Ilyich
Eugen Onegin– Onegin
Verdi, Giuseppe
La traviata – Giorgio Germont
Rigoletto – Rigoletto
Un ballo in maschera – Renato
Don Carlos – Rodrigo
La forza del destino – Don Carlo di Vargas
Jérusalem – Le Comte de Toulouse
Wagner, Richard
Tristan und Isolde – Melot
Weill, Kurt
Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny – Dreieinigkeitsmoses
Gallery
Recent Photos
CD
Music
Invitation au Voyage
Sehnsuchtslieder/Songs of Yearning
