“Lithuanian tenor Kristian Benedikt is capable of furious outbursts as well as intimate piano-singing. A moving portrait of Otello, vocally and in terms of stage-presence.”
– Frankfurter Allgemine Zeitung”

Kristian Benedikt
Tenor

Lithuanian tenor Kristian Benedikt has built a reputation as one of the leading international dramatic tenors of his generation.  A renowned Otello, he has sung the role more than 100 times including performances at the Wiener Staatsoper, Bavarian State Opera Munich, the Mariinski Theatre in St. Petersburg, Modena, Piacenza, Cagliari, Palermo, Ekaterinenburg, Santiago de Chile, Vilnius, Graz, Basel, Stockholm, Latvian Opera Festival and at Victoria’s Pacific Opera, Montreal Opera, Savonlinna Festival, etc.

Recent engagements include his Royal Opera House Covent Garden debut as Canio in I Paglicacci with Antonio Pappano, Calaf in Turandot at the Houston Grand Opera with Eun Sun Kim, the title role of Ernani and Eleazar in La Juive for the Lithuanian National Opera, the title role of Otello at the Wiener Staatspoer with Marco Armiliato, Hungarian National Opera, Savonlinna Opera Festival, Al Bustan Festival, and the Salzburg Easter festival with Christian Thielemann, Samson in Torino Regio, Herman with the Hungarian National Opera, Calaf with the Macedonian National Opera, and Siegmund in Odense. In 2023 he performed Calaf at Teatro Real in Madrid, and this coming season he performs Calaf with Opera de Dijon.

In the 2019/20 season he sang Don Alvaro in La Forza del Destino at Teatro Nacional de Sao Carlos, Hermann in the Queen of Spades at The Metropolitan Opera New York, and Erik in Der Fliegende Holländer at ABAO, Bilbao. In 2018/19 he sang the title role in Don Carlo, Don Jose in Carmen and Calaf at the Lithuanian National Opera, the title role in Andrea Chenier at Teatro Verdi di Trieste and Calaf at Teatro di Colon, Buenos Aires.

Past seasons include Samson in Samson et Dalila at The Metropolitan Opera, Dick Johnson in Girl of the Golden West  in Trieste, Siegmund in Die Walküre in the Odense New Opera house, Don José  in Carmen at the Lithuanian National Opera, Herman for the Luzern Festival, Radames in Aida in Estonian National Opera.

His current repertoire includes the title roles of Otello, Samson, Andrea Chenier, Ernani, Rienzi, Tristan, Lohengrin, as well as Don José (Carmen), Cavaradossi (Tosca), Calaf (Turandot), Canio (I pagliacci), Eleazar (La juive), Manrico (Il trovatore), Herman (Queen of Spades), Dick Johanson (La fanciulla del West).He has performed with conductors such as Antonio Pappano, Marco Armiliato, Marcello Votti, Riccardo Chailly, Maurizio Barbacini, Paolo Carigniani, Asher Fisch, Renato Palumbo, Valeri Gergiev, and Alexander Vedernikov.