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Born in Gyergyóremete (Remetea) in 1983, baritone Levente Molnár made his debut at the National Theatre of Arad in 2001, after completing his studies in solo voice at the Nagy István High School of Music and Art in Csíkszereda (Miercurea Ciuc). He was admitted to the voice department of the Nagyvarád (Oradea) Music Academy and sang for the Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca) Hungarian Opera in 2003. He made his debut at the Hungarian State Opera House in 2004 and has since sung many principal roles here, including Don Giovanni, Count Almaviva, Guglielmo, Figaro, Malatesta (in Juan Pons' debut in the role of Don Pasquale in March 2001), Dandini, Marcello (with Andrea Rost in 2010), Silvio, Escamillo, Onegin and Bagó in John the Valiant.
At Müpa Budapest in 2007, he created the leading role in Viktor Ullmann's opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis together with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, under the baton of Iván Fischer, in a production directed by Andor Lukáts. In 2007 he played the role of Old Deuteronomy in a production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Cats directed by Tamás Szirtes at both the Szeged Open-Air Festival and at the Madách Theatre.
He made it to the finals in his 2007 appearance at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, with Carlo Rizzi conducting. He portrayed Masetto in Don Giovanni at London's Royal Opera House, with Antonio Pappano conducting, and made his debut at Munich's Bayerische Staatsoper as Ford in Falstaff, under the baton of Stefan Soltész. He has been a member of that opera house since the 2009/10 season, regularly singing there the roles of Guglielmo in Così fan tutte, Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Belcore in L'elisir d'amore, Marcello in La bohème, the consul Sharpless in Madama Butterfly, Peter in Hänsel und Gretel, and the Herald in Lohengrin. He has worked with such conductors as Marco Armiliato, Ascher Fisch, Zubin Mehta, Kent Nagano and Stefan Soltész. He sang the role of Wolfram in Tannhäuser in Bordeaux in 2009, reprising it at Deutsche Oper Berlin in 2011 and at the Hungarian State Opera House in 2012. His 2011 portrayal of Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Royal Opera House met with tremendous acclaim from both the audience and within the profession, and he later made his debut at the Wiener Staatsoper in this same role, which he would also sing in Budapest later on. He partnered with Angela Gheorghiu and Joseph Calleja at the Munich Opera Festival in 2012, singing Marcello in La bohème
He has also taken the stage at New York's Metropolitan Opera in two roles: in 2015, as Marcello in La bohème, and in 2016 as Malatesta in Don Pasquale. He has been a permanent member of Opernhaus Zürich since 2016.
Also in 2016, he received both the Ferenc Liszt Award and Transylvania's Kriterion Wreath. In December 2017, his work was recognised with the Hungarian Heritage Award.
Levente Molnár