©Photo: Bill Cooper

Stephen Milling

Bass

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“Stephen Milling is outstanding as Hagen, singing with huge power, but also scrupulous in his care for the text and phrasing.”
(Financial Times)

Danish bass Stephen Milling ranks among the world’s foremost interpreters of Wagner’s repertoire. Particularly strongly associated with the roles of Hagen (Götterdämmerung) and Gurnemanz (Parsifal), performances have taken him to the major international stages including the Bayreuth Festival (Kirill Petrenko), the Wiener Staatsoper (Sir Simon Rattle), the Osterfestspiele Salzburg (Christian Thielemann), and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (Sir Antonio Pappano). Other Wagner highlights have included Hunding (Die Walküre) at The Metropolitan Opera (Valery Gergiev) and in concert with London Philharmonic Orchestra (Vladimir Jurowski), Daland (Der fliegende Holländer) at Bayerische Staatsoper and König Marke (Tristan und Isolde) at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden (Daniel Barenboim) and during the 2021/22 season there were performances of Götterdämmerung at Teatro Real (Pablo Heras-Casado) and of Parsifal at Deutsche Oper Berlin (Axel Kober).

Keen to maintain a broad and diverse repertoire, Stephen Milling’s other roles feature Filippo II (Don Carlos) at San Francisco Opera and Royal Danish Opera, Rocco (Fidelio) at Teatro alla Scala and Gran Teatre del Liceu, Padre Guardiano (La forza del destino) at Semperoper Dresden and Palau de les Artes Reina Sofia, Kaija Saariaho’s Adriana Mater at Opéra national de Paris, Sparafucile (Rigoletto) at The Met, and Sarastro (Die Zauberflöte) at Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Bayerische Staatsoper, Wiener Staatsoper and most recently at the Gran Teatre del Liceu under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel.

On the concert platform, Stephen Milling made his debut with Berliner Philharmoniker in Verdi’s Messa da Requiem under Mariss Jansons and last season joined the first instalment of Rotterdam Philharmonic’s Ring Cycle on tour under Yannick Nezét-Séguin. He features on several CDs including Les Troyens with London Symphony Orchestra (Sir Colin Davis) and on DVD he stars in Der Ring des Nibelungen staged by La Fura dels Baus in Valencia, Parsifal from the Osterfestspiele Salzburg, Der Freischütz from Teatro alla Scala and, in three collaborations with Kasper Holten at the Royal Danish Opera, The Copenhagen Ring, Tannhäuser and Maskarade.

Concert highlights of the 2022/23 season include Das Buch mit Sieben Siegeln at Vienna’s Musikverein under Ingo Metzmacher. Opera performances include appearances as Prince Gremin in Christof Loy’s production of Eugene Onegin at Den Norske Opera, as both Fafner and Hagen in the Semperoper Dresden’s Ring Cycle under Christian Thielemann and a return to the Metropolitan Opera as Sarastro in Simon McBurney’s iconic staging of Die Zauberflöte under Nathalie Stutzmann.

Trained at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, Stephen Milling joined the Royal Danish Opera in 1994 where he debuted several roles that have remained central to his repertoire and recent guest appearances in Copenhagen include as Daland, Sarastro and Rocco. International debuts at Teatro alla Scala as Don Fernando (Fidelio) under Riccardo Muti, and as both Fasolt and Hunding in The Seattle Opera’s new Ring Cycle in 2000 paved an early way to today’s thriving global career.

Gallery

Wagner: Parsifal (excerpt) at Salzburg Easter Festival © Deutsche Grammophon

Wagner: Tannhäuser (excerpt) © Decca Classics/Det Kongelige Teater

Wagner: Siegfried (excerpt) © Unitel Classica

“Stephen Milling brings the executor of the end — Hagen — to the stage with a powerful voice and a lot of presence. With full force, his calls echo pithy over the well-prepared Staatsopernchor.”

Opera Online February 2023

“Milling’s voice is so huge he could give the impression of using only a fraction of it for most of Act 1 (and always servicing the text).”

Opera Magazine, July 2022

“Stephen Milling is a perfect fit for what can be expected of Sarastro. His calm and warm voice makes him the ideal male figure wanted by Mozart and Schikaneder to symbolize justice and knowledge.”

Opera Gazet, July 2022

“Stephen Milling, with the wingspan of a giant and extraordinary scenic poise, sang a serene and firm Sarastro.”

Platea Magazine, June 2022

“Stephen Milling as Hagen, with his poise and dark voice producing a chilling call to arms “

Opera Magazine, May 2022

“Danish bass Stephen Milling gives an overwhelming physical and vocal presence. The scene with the ghost of his father Alberich, highlighted by musical drama, is one of the best.”

(Vanity Fair, February 2022)

“A cast in which the nobility and the line of Stephen Milling’s singing stand out, whose brilliance in the character of Hagen shows that there are no secondary roles”

(El Confidencial, February 2022)

“Stephen Milling was a threatening Hunding with a black bass sound.”

(OperaMag, Feb 2020)

“Stephen Milling, as Hunding, has the most beautiful voice with his built-in subwoofer. Delicious how those consonants roll out.”

(De Volksrant, November 2019)

“Stephen Milling brought vocal authority to the role of the Landgrave.”

(Opera Magazine, July 2019)

“Bass Stephen Milling was also top-drawer, combining power with effortless lyricism as Landgrave Hermann.”

(Bachtrack, April 2019)

“Total Wagnerian perfection in a nutshell came from Stephen Milling, making his mark with huge authority as the brute husband who treats his
wife as a chattel.”

(The Arts Desk, January 2019)

“Stephen Milling’s Hagen, by contrast, was an awesome, overbearing presence both physically and vocally.”

(Guardian, September 2018)

“Warner opted to double up the roles of Padre Guardiano and the Marchese de Calatrava, and they were given imposing form by Stephen Milling.”

(Hugh Canning, Opera Magazine, August 2018)

“Stephen Milling is excellent, a Rocco with a beautiful burnished tone, full bodied and incisive. He knows how to highlight humanity from great simplicity, his Rocco has foresight and is maybe even a little corruptible but certainly not a killer. And in the aria Hat man nicht auch Gold beineben he adds wisdom and common sense.”

(OPERACLICK.COM, June 2018)

“The [cast all] made valuable contributions, especially the imposing bass of Stephen Milling (the Hermit)”

(Opera Magazine, March 2018)

“There were some truly exceptional performances:… Stephen Milling’s stentorian Hagen, whose famous call in Act 2 of Götterdämmerung seemed to shake the theatre’s wooden structure”

(Opera Magazine, October 2017)

“Stephen Milling sings a wonderfully nasty Hagen with the aura of a heavyweight boxer. Brutal in the scene when he kills Siegfried.”

(Salzburger Nachtrichten, August 2017)

“Stephen Milling, who sings the role of Hagen with inexhaustible power reserves and a soothing bass”

(Neue Musikzeitung, August 2017)

“As the giant Fafner, Stephen Milling [was] marvellous…Milling offered a more gruff but equally colourful bass as the treacherous Fafner.”

(New York Classical Review, June 2017)

“in vocal terms [Hans Sachs] was outgunned by the Pogner of Stephen Milling, a singer of dark Wagnerian power.”

(John Allison, Opera Magazine, May 2017)

“Stephen Milling’s penetrating, dramatic bass proved excellent in the role of Philippe II”

(Badische Zeitung, June 2016)

“Stephen Milling’s Hermann tramped the stage fiercely and filled the theatre with generous waves of sound.”

(Opera Magazine, July 2016)

“Stephen Milling sounds superbly sonorous as the Landgrave.”

(Guardian, Tim Ashley, May 2016)

“Danish bass Stephen Milling is a tower of strength as the Landgrave.”

(The Stage, May 2016)

“Stephen Milling’s sonorous Landgrave was, quite rightly, especially acclaimed by the audience.”

(Opera Today, May 2016)

“Stephen Milling sang Gurnemanz with dark, focused tone and excellent diction.”

(Opera Magazin, March 2016)

“Stephen Milling was an inspired Gurnemanz, with a dark timbre, secure intonation and forthright diction.”

(Opernwelt, February 2016)

“Stephen Milling was a top quality Gurnemanz. He maintained a compelling line in his poignant song, as well as strong stage presence.”

(Mundo Clásico, December 2015)

“The highlight, an all-round outstanding Stephen Milling as Hagen”

(Stuttgarter Zeitung, August 2015)

“Stephen Milling, already physically convincing as Hagen, gives a highly dramatic vocal performance also. Ideal casting.”

(Mittelbayerische, August 2015)

“Stephen Milling, who wowed me as Marke in a Berlin Tristan last year, was an outstanding Hagen. Not only was his voice thrilling and, when needed, vast, he also captured the formidable menace of his character better than most others I’ve seen. His Watch Song was delivered from inside an iron grill, but this only intensified the impression of restrained malevolent power.”

(David Larkin, Bachtrack, August 2015)

“The central force of the evening is Stephen Milling. His Hagen is both theatrically and vocally terrific. With his soft, dark bass, Milling gives gives the scheming character a demonic streak with great charisma and a seductive power.”

(Kreiszeitung, August 2015)

“Stephen Milling as the cuckolded king was the most consistently pleasing of the evening. Possessing a rich, mellifluous timbre with excellent diction and an ability to shape long vocal phrases with outstanding projection.”

(Opera Critic, February 2015)

“Stephen Milling convinces as King Marke, full of desperate sound with a voluminous penetrating dark voice.”

(Opera Online, February 2015)

“In the role of King Marke was the excellent Stephen Milling who sang with a large homogenous voice and perfect intonation.”

(Teatro.org, February 2015)