Bass Ante Jerkunica regularly appears at major opera houses and festivals, such as Deutsche Oper Berlin, Bayerische Staatsoper Munich, Staatsoper Vienna, the Salzburg Festival, Teatro Real Madrid, and Metropolitan Opera New York.
He started his career at the Croatian National Theatre in Split in 2002. He was engaged at Deutsche Oper Berlin, where he sang a variety of bass roles ranging from bel canto to Wagner, including Fiesco (Simon Boccanegra), Philippe II (Don Carlo), Padre Guardiano (La forza del destino), Banco (Macbeth), Alvise (La Gioconda), Rodolfo (La sonnambula), Sarastro (Die Zauberflöte), Marcel (Les Huguenots), Gremin (Eugene Onegin), Pimen (Boris Godunov), Fafner (Das Rheingold and Siegfried), Hunding (Die Walküre), King Marke (Tristan und Isolde), and Daland (Der fliegende Holländer). Parallel to his career in Berlin, his international career was on the rise, with guest appearances at prestigious opera houses in Frankfurt, Leipzig, Cologne, Hamburg and Zurich, Opera National de Paris, Opera Lyon, Bilbao Opera, Teatro San Carlo Lisbon, Staatsoper Vienna, Theater an der Wien, and operas in Amsterdam, Antwerp and Seattle.
He has regularly collaborated with Teatro de Liceu Barcelona, La Monnaie Brussels and Opera National du Rhin Strasbourg, where he interpreted a number of notable and critically acclaimed roles: Bluebeard (Duke Bluebeard’s Castle), Gurnemanz (Parsifal), Inquisitor (Don Carlo), Fafner and Fasolt (Das Rheinglod and Siegfried), Hunding (Die Walküre), Saltan (The Tale of Tsar Saltan), Sparafucile (Rigoletto), and Balthazar (La favorite). His role of Vodník in Rusalka at the renowned Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires earned him the Audience Award for best interpreter of the 2017/18 opera season. In 2017 he sang the role of Prince Ivan Khovansky in the opera Khovanschina in London’s Royal Albert Hall at the BBC Proms.
The COVID-19 pandemic briefly postponed a number of important appearances, including the Glyndebourne Festival in Great Britain, the Aix-en-Provence Festival and three productions at the Metropolitan Opera in New York; in the spring of 2022 he made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera as Sparafucile in Rigoletto. He has frequently appeared in prestigious European concert halls, such as the Berliner Philharmonie, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Konzerthaus Vienna, Konzerthaus Berlin, etc. He has also collaborated with renowned conductors including Riccardo Muti, Kirill Petrenko, Semyon Bychkov, Ivor Bolton, Marco Armiliato, Sir Mark Elder, Kent Nagano, Adam Fischer, Sir Donald Runnicles, Marc Albrecht, Michael Jurowsky, Alexander Vedernikov, Bertrand de Billy, Alain Altinoglu, etc. His successful collaborations include prominent opera directors, such as Robert Carsen, Calixto Bieito, Dmitri Tcherniakov, David Alden, Casper Holten, Àlex Ollé, Hans Neuenfels, and Romeo Castelluci.
His future projects include new musical and interpretative challenges in the productions of the Dresden Opera, the Vienna State Opera, and Teatro Real Madrid. He is especially looking forward to his next appearance at the Metropolitan Opera New York in the fall of 2024.
