Rafael Alvarez

Born in Mexico City in 1970, from 1987 – 1995 Rafael Alvarez studied singing and chorus conducting under professors Antonio López and Yordi Ramiro at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música. Between 1995 and 1996, he held a fellowship at the Musikhochschule in Vienna, Austria. His three-year contract at the Opera Nacional de México included appearances as Nemorino (L’elisir d’amore), the Duke (Rigoletto), Ferrando (Così fan tutte) and Almaviva (Il barbiere di Siviglia). He sang Alfredo (La traviata) and Edgardo (Lucia di Lammermoor) at Teatro Trujillo in Peru. In November 1997, Mr Alvarez received the Best Song Interpretation Award in the Carlo Morelli Singing Competition in Mexico City. Moving to Vienna, he joined the Neue Oper Wien. Later, he frequented masterclasses conducted by Ramón Vargas and Renata Scotto, a course in German lieder under Zeger Vandersteen in S. I. V. A. M., an opera studio in Mexico, and a course in song and oratorio interpretation under professors Thomas Kerbl and Althea Bridges in Linz. In 2006, Mr Alvarez sang Michel in Bohuslav Martinů’s Julietta and Ferrando in Così fan tutte at the Schlosstheater Schönbrunn. Since 2007, he has made regular appearances in the Czech Republic (in opera houses in Ústí nad Labem, Liberec, Prague, and Olomouc); other guest commitments took him to Plovdiv, Bulgaria. In 2008 he made his debut as Faust at the Edinburgh Grand Opera. Mr Alvarez is a frequent guest of concert productions, where his favourite works include Orff’s Carmina Burana, Handel’s The Messiah, and the music of J. S. Bach. His current vocal coaches are Francisco Gutierrez, Alessandro Pagliazzi, Hugh Beresford. Among the opera houses he has worked with figures prominently the Vienna State Opera.

His repertoire comprises over 15 roles (apart from those listed above, they include Radames in Aida, Don José in Carmen, and others). Later on in the 2010/2011 season, he will create the part of Jacopo Foscari in a new production of Verdi’s I Due Foscari mounted by Friedrich Haider at the Slovak National Theatre in Bratislava. Guest appearing at the Prague State Opera since 2009, he has been cast here in the roles of the Prince in Dvořák’s Rusalka, the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto, Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly, and in the company’s production entitled Vivat Operetta! In the summer of 2010, he joined a cast of PSO soloists on a tour in Seoul, taking part of Don José in a performance of Carmen at the Seoul Arts Centre under the baton of Jiří Mikula, during the First Opera Festival in Korea.