Alexander Mayr

The Viennese tenor Alexander Mayr received his first musical training as a member of the Vienna Boys’ Choir and studied voice at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and with Prof. Franz Lukasovsky at the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. Since his operatic debut in Hans Werner Henze’s “Elegy for Young Lovers” in 1998 he has appeared in more than 50 operatic roles on international stages – among them the theatres of Innsbruck, Klagenfurt, Basel, Lucerne, Lübeck and Oldenburg, Deutsche Oper am Rhein Düsseldorf, the opera houses of Cologne, Frankfurt and Wuppertal, Opera Zuid Maastricht, the Greek National Opera in Athens, the Aldeburgh and Almeida Festivals in England as well as the Salzburg and Bregenz Festivals.

A specialist in the high tenor repertoire, he is noted for roles such as the Police Inspector in Shostakovich’s “The Nose”, the Astrologer in Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Golden Cockerel” and the Student Arkenholz in Reimann’s “Die Gespenstersonate”. He has also performed as a countertenor; his discography includes recordings of Orff’s “Carmina Burana”, Monteverdi’s “L’Orfeo” and Krenek’s “Karl V.” (Bregenz Festival 2008).

Alexander Mayr is University Professor of Voice and Applied Vocal Pedagogy at the Antonio Salieri Department of Vocal Studies and Vocal Research in Music Education at the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and has been head of the department since 2026. For his artistic doctoral project on the voce faringea, the forgotten singing practice of the bel canto tenors, he was awarded a Dr. art. with distinction by the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz; his book “Voce faringea. Eine Kunst der Belcanto-Tenöre” was published by Bärenreiter in 2018 (ISBN 978-3-7618-2468-9).