Barry McDaniel was an American operatic baritone who spent his career almost exclusively in Germany, including 37 years at the Deutsche Oper Berlin.
18 Facts About Barry McDaniel
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Barry McDaniel appeared internationally at major opera houses and festivals, and created roles in several new operas, including Henze's Der junge Lord, Nabokov's Love's Labour's Lost, and Reimann's Melusine.
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Barry McDaniel was a celebrated concert singer and recitalist, focused on German Lied and French melodie.
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Barry McDaniel studied with Alfred Paulus and Hermann Reutter at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart, where he worked on his already extensive repertoire of German and French art song.
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Barry McDaniel made his first professional appearance as a recitalist in Stuttgart in 1953.
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Barry McDaniel was a member of the Staatsoper Stuttgart from 1957 to 1959, when he moved to the opera at the Staatstheater Karlsruhe.
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Barry McDaniel remained under contract with the Deutsche Oper from 1962 till 1999, singing more than 1,800 performances, in the premieres of 54 productions.
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Barry McDaniel collaborated with some of Germany's most distinguished stage directors such as Rudolf Sellner, Gotz Friedrich or Gunther Rennert, in an ensemble that included singers such as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Elisabeth Grummer, Josef Greindl, Ernst Haefliger, James King, Pilar Lorengar and Edith Mathis.
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Barry McDaniel was the first to appear as Cuauhtemoc in Montezuma by Roger Sessions in 1964, and as the Secretary in Hans Werner Henze's Der junge Lord in 1965.
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Barry McDaniel created the title role in Isang Yun's Der Traum des Liu-Tung at the Akademie der Kunste in Berlin in 1965.
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Barry McDaniel performed in Vienna, Geneva, Amsterdam, Mexico and Japan.
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Barry McDaniel appeared as a male lead, Count Lusignan, in the premiere of Aribert Reimann's opera Melusine at the Schwetzingen Festival of 1971, in a production that was shown at the Edinburgh International Festival that year, with Catherine Gayer in the title role.
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Barry McDaniel displayed remarkable versatility as an oratorio singer and recitalist, with compositions from Baroque to contemporary.
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Barry McDaniel's focus in sacred music was on Bach cantatas, and being the vox Christi in both Bach's St Matthew Passion and the St John Passion, and works by Georg Philipp Telemann.
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Barry McDaniel was a frequent performer of French melodies, such as by Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Francis Poulenc, and a specialist of contemporary scores by composers such as Aribert Reimann, Anton Webern, Gunter Bialas, Luigi Dallapiccola and Carl Orff.
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Barry McDaniel lived in Berlin, where he died on June 18,2018.
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Barry McDaniel recorded in 1980, in a performance of the Salzburg Festival conducted by Leopold Hager, the role of Nardo in Mozart's La finta giardiniera.
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Barry McDaniel sang many art songs for German public radio stations, the Swiss radio and the BBC.