Vladimir Baykov

In the beginning of the 2010/11 season Vladimir Baykov will sing the role of Ruprecht in a concert performance of Prokofiev’s “The Fiery Angel” under the baton of Leif Segerstam. This concert is opening the 50th anniversary season of the prestigious ZaterdagMatinee at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam. With the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale of RAI he will be singing Salieri in Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Mozart and Salieri” in Lugano and Torino; at Torino’s Teatro Regio he will appear as Warlaam. Vladimir Baykov is a scholarship holder of the Richard-Wagner-Association at the Bayreuth Festival 2010 and in 2011 will be covering Wotan in “Das Rheingold” and “Die Walküre“ as well as Wanderer at the Finnish National Opera Helsinki. At the Erfurt opera house he will make his debut as Jochanaan in April 2011.

Other forthcoming engagements include Donner at the Nederlandse Opera Amsterdam and Vodnik at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona.

To his most important past engagements belongs “Boris Godunov“ where he sang the title role, alternating with José van Dam, at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels (2006). He is working regularly at the Finnish National Opera, where, in 2009, he made his highly acclaimed debut as Vodnik; at the opera house in Bonn and at the National Theatre Mannheim, where, in 2010, he sang his first Wagnerian roles, Kothner and Gunther. At the Teatr Wielki in Warsaw he sang Méphistophélès in Robert Wilson’s much celebrated production. He has also performed at the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, Lisbon; the Aalto Theatre Essen and the Festival di due mondi in Spoleto.

Vladimir Baykov’s recent concert engagements include performances of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony under Justus Frantz in Munich’s Philharmonic Hall, Frankfurt's Alte Oper and Berlin's Konzerthaus and Verdi’s Requiem on tour with Enoch zu Guttenberg at the Berlin Philharmonic and Alte Oper Frankfurt. Gianandrea Noseda, Antonello Allemandi, Alan Curtis, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Stefan Soltesz, Carlo Franci, Woldemar Nelsson and Kazushi Ono are among the conductors with whom he has worked, and he has given recitals in his native Russia and abroad, in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and Japan.

Vladimir Baykov has recorded Louis Spohr’s “Die letzten Dinge” for Capriccio records in 2007 (conducted by Bruno Weil).

He has been prize winner of several prestigious competitions: "Bella Voce" (Moscow, 1997); "Mirjam Helin (Helsinki, 1999); "Neue Stimmen" (Gütersloh, 1999); "Maria Callas" (Athens, 2001); "Belvedere" (Vienna, 2001); "Georgy Sviridov" (Kursk, 2001); "Queen Sonja" (Oslo, 2003) and "Queen Elizabeth" (Brussels 2004).

He was born in 1974 in Moscow and graduated from the Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology as a Cybernetic Engineer before beginning his vocal studies at the Prokofiev Opera Studio in Moscow. He joined Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Conservatory in 1996, graduating with diplomas in solo singing and teaching in 2001.