Raphael Wittmer

The Swiss tenor Raphael Wittmer has been a long-standing member of the ensemble at the Nationaltheater Mannheim. In the 2025/26 season he will appear there as Graf Boni in "Die Csárdásfürstin", as Conte Almaviva in "Il barbiere di Siviglia" and as Tamino in "Die Zauberflöte". His repertoire in Mannheim includes, among others, Pedrillo in "Die Entführung aus dem Serail", Don Ottavio in "Don Giovanni", Jaquino in "Fidelio", Truffaldino in "The Love for Three Oranges", Camille de Rosillon in "The Merry Widow", as well as Kaufmann in "Jakob Lenz".

 

Guest engagements have taken Raphael Wittmer to Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf, Teatro Massimo in Palermo, Hamburg State Opera, Grand Théâtre de la Ville de Luxembourg, and Stuttgart State Opera. He has collaborated with conductors such as Alessandro De Marchi, Fabio Biondi, Dan Ettinger, and Alexander Soddy, and has worked under the direction of Luk Perceval, Calixto Bieito, Lorenzo Fioroni, and Barbora Horáková.

 

On the concert stage, Raphael Wittmer has also enjoyed notable successes. In 2023, he performed the tenor arias in J. S. Bach’s "St John Passion" with the Gewandhaus Orchestra and the St. Thomas Choir in Leipzig’s Thomaskirche. At the Rosengarten Mannheim, he most recently sang the tenor part in Mendelssohn’s "Elijah" with the chorus and orchestra of the Nationaltheater Mannheim and appeared at Cologne Cathedral in Rossini’s "Stabat Mater". Together with his duo partner, the accordionist Goran Stevanovich, he created a version of Schubert’s song cycle "Die schöne Müllerin" for tenor and accordion, which premiered in July 2024 at Schwetzingen Palace.

 

Raphael Wittmer began his musical training with the Lucerne Boys’ Choir and as a cellist at the Lucerne School of Music. Already at the age of nine, he made his first operatic appearance as First Boy in "Die Zauberflöte" under the baton of Marcello Viotti at Lucerne Theater. He went on to study voice at the music universities in Basel and Cologne, supported by scholarships from the Friedl Wald Foundation and the Marianne and Curt Dienemann Foundation. After completing his studies, he joined the International Opera Studio at Cologne Opera, before his first engagement at Theater Plauen-Zwickau, where he made his debut as Ferrando in "Così fan tutte".