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The Canadian-German lyric tenor, Michael Schade, was born to Hans and Liesel Schade of Gelsenkirchin, in Germany's Ruhr Valley. Hans was an engineer, working in Geneva during the time that their three children, Johannes (Hans), Michael, and Isabelle, were born. Hans joined the European office of Inco, the Canada-based nickel-mining concern. In 1977 the company offered Hans an opportunity to move to its headquarters in Toronto. Both parents were musical: Both sang in church and semi-professional choruses. All three children were given sound training while growing up; Hans and Michael were enrolled in the St. Michael's Choir School in Toronto.
Michael Schade says that he knew his voice was good, "because I was always chosen to go on tours" with the school's choir. However, his main interest was zoology. His family expected that Michael would become an ornithologist, doctor, or veterinarian. "He was always looking after sick animals," says Hans.
Michael Schade entered the pre-med program at the University of Western Ontario. At his parents' urging he joined the university choir. When the director assigned solos to him it became obvious to him that he had talent. Guest Professor Roma Ridelle heard him sing an aria from Carmen, and started a campaign to get him to join the music school. When he was offered a full scholarship, he decided. "I felt that if I didn't try it, I'd never know what could have been," he explains.
After graduating in 1988, Michael Schade entered the Master's program at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. This led to his being invited to join the Merola Program, a company for the development of the most promising student opera singers run by the San Francisco Opera. In 1988 he was invited to sing the part of Jacquino in Beethoven's Fidelio by Pacific Opera Victoria (Canada). In 1990, still a student at Curtis, he won the New York oratorio Competition, leading to his singing in Handel's Messiah at Carnegie Hall. This, in turn, led the giant management firm Columbia Artists to take on his representation.
Michael Schade began appearing frequently in oratorio in Canada and singing opera in Pesaro, Bologna, Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver. The early-music specialist conductor Helmuth Rilling engaged him to join his 1991 European tour singing the Evangelist in Bach's St. John Passion (BWV 245). In 1992 the Canadian Government awarded him the Virginia P. Moore Prize, $27,000 to enable him to get professional coaching and to take an audition tour. In 1992 this took him to Vienna, where he auditioned for the Vienna State Opera. A few days later, the general manager called him with an emergency request to fill in for a tenor in The Barber of Seville the next day. Practically overnight he became a full member of the company, and has sung over eleven different roles.
In 1990 a Canadian performance of Romeo et Juliette, in which he sang Tybalt, also included Calgary-born mezzo-soprano Noreen Burgess in the cast, as Stephano. This made Schade a Capulet and Burgess a Montague. "She kept glaring at me the whole time, and all I could do was think how cute she was," Michael says. They are now married and live in Toronto.
In the 1990's, in a short period of time, Michael Schade became a highly regarded newcomer on the international opera and recital scene, and one of the most popular singers of the young generation. He has already performed at the Vienna State Opera, at the Metropolitan Opera in New York (debut in 1993 in Fidelio), Milan's La Scala, the San Francisco Opera, the Canadian Opera Company, the the Hamburg Staatsoper, Paris Opera, and the Salzburg Festival. His repertoire includes works of Mozart, Richard Strauss, Stravinsky, Wagner, Rossini, and Beethoven. In Vienna he sang The Magic Flute, Arabella, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, The Meistersinger of Nürnberg, The Flying Dutchman and he made his debut at the Los Angeles Opera in 1996; other major engagements took him to the Opéra de Bastille in 1997, to the Salzburg Festival and to the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1999.
Michael Schade's numerous engagements as a concert singer include performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Helmuth Rilling, with the Wiener Musikverein under Nikolaus Harnoncourt, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra under Esa-Pekka Salonen, under Carlo Maria Giulini in Vienna, performances in Florence, Minnesota and with John Eliot Gardiner in London, New York and Salzburg. He has recently (2004) sung with the Vienna Philharmonic under Riccardo Muti in Vienna, Milan, Dresden and Leipzig; with Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic; and earlier this year toured with the San Francisco Symphony under Michael Tilson Thomas. In past Salzburg Festival appearances he has been heard as Tamino in Die Zauberflöte under Christoph von Dohnányi, in Cherubini’s Médée under Sir Charles Mackerras, in Mahler’s Lied von der Erde under Pierre Boulez, under Dennis Russell Davies in the world premiere of Philip Glass’s 5th Symphony, in Don Giovanni and in La clemenza di Tito under Nikolaus Harnoncourt, performing the title role.
Michael Schade has given Lied recitals in Stuttgart, Toronto and Paris. Michael Schade co-operate closely with Helmuth Rilling, with whom he has recorded the St John (BWV 245) and the St Matthew (BWV 244) Passions, The Creation and Felix Mendelssohn’s oratorios Elias and Paulus and most recently Franz Liszt’s Christus. He has also made recordings with John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Colin Davis, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Myung-Whun Chung and Trevor Pinnock.
Michael Schade has frequently recorded on such labels as CBC Records and Hyperion. His CBC disc French opera arias and duets won the Juno Award, Canada's equivalent of the Grammys. |
