Reinhard Dorn first studied to be a teacher before attending the Music University of his native city Cologne. After first engagements in Karlsruhe and Cologne he has been a freelance singer since 1994, working at such opera houses as: Vienna State Opera, Bavarian State Opera, Berlin State Opera, Semperoper Dresden, Hamburg State Opera, Cologne, Bonn, Paris (Bastille), Bologna, Amsterdam, Brussels and San Diego.

Reinhard Dorn’s engagements amply demonstrate the diversity of his repertoire: Sarastro, Daland, Landgraf, Kecal and Frank in Die Fledermaus in Dresden; van Bett, Baron Ochs and Rocco in Hamburg; Kecal at the Glyndebourne Festival; Sarastro in Düsseldorf and Bologna; Sprecher and Bartolo in Paris; Pogner at the Maggio musicale in Florence and in Japan with the Munich State Opera; Don Pasquale and Rocco (in the 1806 version of Leonore) in Bonn; Mustafa (L’Italiana in Algeri) and Landgraf in Cologne; Osmin in Munich, Berlin, Ancona, Cagliari and Strasbourg and Sprecher in San Diego; as well as Claudio in Händel’s Agrippina at the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, Lisbon. In 2010 he made his début as Dikoi in Katya Kabanova at the Teatro Colón Buenos Aires.

In 2013 Reinhard Dorn sang Brighella in Richard Wagner’s Das Liebesverbot for the first time at the Bayreuth Festival and Leipzig Opera. He reprised the role in Trieste and subsequently in Leipzig for the 2014/15 and 2015/16 seasons. In the 2015/16 season he sang the roles of Benoit and Alcindoro in a new production of Puccini’s La bohème in Cologne, which was also revived for the 2016/17 season. More recently he sang the role of Antonio in Hamburg and the same role again in a new production of Nozze di Figaro in Cologne.