René Perler
René Perler is at home in the operatic and concert repertoire from the Renaissance to the 21st century. He devotes himself with particular pleasure to early music, solo ensemble singing and art song.
He has sung with conductors such as Andrew Parrott, Martin Haselböck, Michel Corboz, Dominique Vellard, Livio Picotti and Hans-Christoph Rademann in many of Europe’s most important venues, including St Mark’s in Venice, the Basilica Superiore in Assisi, the cathedrals of Berlin and Malaga, the Church of St Peter in Riga, and in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nablus and Ramallah. Together with the pianist Edward Rushton he has given lieder recitals in Wagner’s Wahnfried Villa in Bayreuth and in the Richard Strauss Institute in Garmisch-Parten- kirchen. He is a member of the group “Besuch der Lieder”, who are committed with heart and soul to bringing the art song back into the private living room. www.besuchderlieder.net
Perler’s operatic roles, which he has sung on stage variously in Fribourg, Bern, Besançon and Lausanne, include Don Bartolo (Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro), Herr Reich (Nicolai’s The Merry Wives of Windsor), Tirésias (the blind seer in Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex), Colline (Puccini’s La Bohème), Nardo (Mozart’s La finta giardiniera), Holländer-Michel (in the first performance of Simon Ho’s Das kalte Herz), Bartolo (Rossini's Barber of Seville) and Licone/Caronte (Haydn’s Orlando paladino). Together with the puppeteer Neville Tranter and the Freitagsakademie Bern, he brought the monster Polyphemus to life on a tour of Handel’s Acis & Galatea, including at the Dresden Music Festival.
Perler studied singing in Fribourg, Bern, London, Zurich, Winterthur and Amsterdam, and his teachers included Cécile Zay, Jakob Stämpfli, Horst Günter, Rudolf Piernay, László Pólgar and Margreet Honig. He also has degrees in musicology and history from the Universities of Fribourg and Bern.
