The Australian tenor Michael Smallwood is distinguished by his expressive, dark-hued timbre and his ability to shape musical nuances and dramatic characters with great precision – from works of the Baroque era through Mozart and Strauss to contemporary opera. Regular engagements have taken him to major opera houses and festivals such as Teatro alla Scala di Milano, Opéra national de Paris, Opéra de Lyon, Gran Teatre del Liceu Barcelona, Teatro Real Madrid, Theater an der Wien, Komische Oper Berlin, Oper Leipzig, De Nationale Opera Amsterdam, Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, Santa Fe Opera, as well as the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Glyndebourne, the Händel-Festspiele in Halle and Karlsruhe, the Lincoln Center Festival, and the Ruhrtriennale.
In the 2026/27 season, Michael Smallwood will take on the roles of Der Haushofmeister der Marschallin and Ein Wirt (Der Rosenkavalier) under the musical direction of Andrés Orozco-Estrada at Oper Köln. He will also appear as 2. Jude (Salome) at Teatro Regio di Torino under the musical direction of Axel Kober.
He is also a welcome guest at Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin, where he has taken on roles including Mercure (Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie), Monostatos (Die Zauberflöte), Goro (Madama Butterfly), Spoletta (Tosca), 1. Gralsritter (Parsifal), and 2. Jude (Salome), the latter also at Deutsche Oper Berlin. Further engagements have taken him as Spoletta (Tosca) under Daniele Callegari to Semperoper Dresden and to Opéra de Lyon under Daniele Rustioni. He has also appeared at Nederlandse Reisopera as Knusperhexe (Hänsel und Gretel), at the Sydney Opera House and at Aalto-Theater Essen as Tamino (Die Zauberflöte), and was heard at Teatro alla Scala in Milan in Kurt Weill’s Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, Die sieben Todsünden, and Happy End. Recent engagements included the tenor role in Carmina Burana in Gothenburg as well as Jack Twist in the new production of Charles Wuorinen’s opera Brokeback Mountain at Theater Erfurt.
Concert engagements include Richard Strauss’ Salome with the WDR Sinfonieorchester under the direction of Cristian Măcelaru, both at the Kölner Philharmonie and during the orchestra’s guest appearance at the Enescu Festival in Bucharest, which was recorded for WDR. He has worked with conductors including Daniel Barenboim, Philippe Jordan, Sir Simon Rattle, Marek Janowski, René Jacobs, Vladimir Jurowski, Ingo Metzmacher, Ulf Schirmer, Stefan Soltesz, Karl-Heinz Steffens, Michael Boder, and Tomáš Netopil. Particularly in the Baroque repertoire, he has a longstanding collaboration with conductors such as William Christie, Alessandro De Marchi, Jane Glover, Thomas Hengelbrock, Andreas Spering, and Konrad Junghänel.
His significant recordings include Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Semyon Bychkov as part of the Glyndebourne Festival, as well as Richard Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg under Marek Janowski with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin and the Rundfunkchor Berlin (PentaTone Classics).
Michael Smallwood began his vocal training alongside his studies in law at the University of Melbourne. He subsequently studied at the Victorian College of the Arts, the Australian National Academy of Music, and the Juilliard School in New York. His professional career initially took him to the Hamburgische Staatsoper as a member of the opera studio and subsequently of the ensemble. From 2013 to 2016, he was a member of the ensemble at Aalto-Theater Essen, where he significantly expanded his repertoire, particularly in the works of Mozart, Handel, and Richard Strauss.