German tenor Stefan Vinke studied at the Music Academy of Cologne. From 1999 to 2005 he was a member of the ensemble at the Nationaltheater Mannheim where he flourished in variety of roles including Tristan, Florestan, Parsifal, Lohengrin, Siegmund, Erik and other leading tenor roles such as Idomeneo, Don José and Hoffmann. New roles were added—such as Un Emigrante in Luigi Nonos’s Intolleranza, Andrea Chénier, Jim Mahony, Max, Paul in Die tote Stadt—on stages including the Opéra de Paris, opera houses in Cologne, Geneva, Stuttgart and at the Teatro La Fenice.

Since his debut as Siegfried in 2006 in Robert Carsen’s production of The Ring at the Cologne Opera, Stefan Vinke has performed this role in productions in Venice, Lisbon, Strasbourg, Weimar, Deutsche Oper Berlin and at the Salzburg Easter Festival in 2010. With Wagner at the centre of his career he performs amongst other places in Madrid, Hong Kong and CSO Chicago (Tristan), Hamburg, Berlin and Peking (Lohengrin), Munich, Geneva, Philadelphia (Ariadne auf Naxos) and Valencia (Samson et Dalila), the Bayreuth Festival (Stolzing and Tristan), Covent Garden, Sevilla, Melbourne and Seattle (Siegfried), Bayerische Staatsoper (Erik) under the baton of directors including Sir Simon Rattle, Jeffrey Tate, Lothar Zagrosek, Donald Runnicles and Philippe Jordan. He has sung the tenor role in Mahler’s Symphony No 8 at the Royal Albert Hall (BBC), Bamberg and at the Enescu Festival.