<p>Ralf Lukas was born into a family of musicians in Bayreuth. He studied at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Aribert Reimann and Hans Hotter. In 1991 he was awarded first prize at the Hertogenbosch International Competition. He made his debut at the Berlin Deutsche Oper in such roles as Papageno in Magic Flute, Leporello in Don Giovanni, Paolo Albiani in Simon Boccanegra and the Herald in Lohengrin. He has also performed the roles of Wotan and the Wanderer (The Ring) at Wiesbaden, Darmstadt, Cologne, Rome, Riga and Macau, etc. From 2006 to 2012, he was regularly invited to the Bayreuth Festival where he interpreted the roles of Donner (Das Rheingold), Gunther (Götterdämmerung) and Melot (Tristan and Isolde).</p><p>He made his debut in the role of Hans Sachs (Die Meistersinger) at the Darmstadt Staatstheater and sang Melot (Tristan and Isolde) at the Paris Opera in 2008 and Barak (Die Frau ohne Schatten) at the New National Theatre of Tokyo in 2010. More recently he has performed the roles of Wozzeck and Kurwenal (Tristan and Isolde) in Darmstadt. During the 2014 / 2015 season, he sang Dr Schön and Jack the Ripper in Lulu at the Royal Opera in Copenhagen, the title role in Caligula by Detlev Glanert at the Hanover Staatsoper, Hans Sachs in Helsinki and Don Alfonso in Così fan tutte at the Cuvilliés Theatre in Munich. Ralf Lukas has performed with many renowned conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Chailly, Sir Colin Davis, Armin Jordan, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Sir Roger Norrington, Seiji Ozawa, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Giuseppe Sinopoli and Christian Thielemann. He has recorded Brahms’ Die schöne Magelone and Gurre-Lieder by Schönberg with Michael Gielen, L’Enfance du Christ (Hérode) and Benvenuto Cellini (Pope Clement) with Sir Roger Norrington, Elijah by Mendelssohn for MDR, Cantata op. 49 by Othmar Schoeck with Mario Venzago (Diapason d’Or in 2007) and Christus by Liszt with the Beethoven Orchestra and Roman Kofman (Prix Echo in 2007). He also appears on the DVDs of Haydn’s The Seasons conducted by Enoch zu Guttenberg, Das Rheingold (Donner) at the Liceu in Barcelona and Götterdämmerung (Gunther) at the Palau de les Arts in Valencia in a production directed by La Fura dels Baus and conducted by Zubin Mehta.</p>