One of Iceland’s most experienced tenors, Kolbeinn Jon Ketilsson studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, where he completed his opera diploma. In 1997, he joined the Opera in Dortmund for a one-year engagement, after which he became a member of the Cologne Opera until 2000. Since then, he has pursued a freelance international career. In the summer of 2000 he made his debut at the Salzburg Festival as Énée in Berlioz’s Les Troyens. In 2005, he sang Radamès in the opening production of Aida at the new Copenhagen Opera House, and in 2011 he performed the tenor solo in Beethoven’s 9th Symphony at the inauguration of Harpa Concert Hall in Reykjavik under the baton of Vladimir Ashkenazy.

He has appeared as a guest artist at leading opera houses including Semperoper Dresden, Bavarian State Opera Munich, Frankfurt, Essen, Karlsruhe, Helsinki, Theater an der Wien, Wiener Volksoper, Toronto, Epidaurus, Geneva, Opéra du Rhin Strasbourg, Ancona, Opéra de Lausanne, Turin, Teatro di San Carlo Naples, Valencia, Teatro Nacional de São Carlos Lisbon, The Icelandic Opera, Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie Brussels, Marseille, and Opéra National de Paris.

His extensive operatic repertoire includes more than 40 major roles, among them Tristan (Tristan und Isolde), Énée (Les Troyens), Florestan (Fidelio), Rodolfo (La Bohème), Tamino (Die Zauberflöte), Bacchus (Ariadne auf Naxos), the Emperor (Die Frau ohne Schatten), Erik (Der fliegende Holländer), Don José (Carmen), Cavaradossi (Tosca), and Radamès (Aida), as well as the title roles in Tannhäuser, Parsifal, Lohengrin, Rienzi, Don Carlo, Hoffmann, and Peter Grimes. He is equally at home in the Italian, German, and French repertoire, while also having performed significant roles from other stylistic periods – from Giasone (Medea) and Aeneas (Dido and Aeneas) to modern parts such as Prescott in Gefors’ Notorious and Der schöne Herr Hermann in Hindemith’s Neues vom Tage.

He has worked with renowned conductors including Antonio Pappano, Jeffrey Tate, Lorin Maazel, Fabio Luisi, Sylvain Cambreling, Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta, Jesús López Cobos, Bertrand de Billy, Vladimir Ashkenazy, and Kent Nagano, and with stage directors such as Jonathan Miller, Christof Loy, Werner Hernicke, Carlos Saura, John Dew, Pier Luigi Pizzi, Paul Curran, and Willy Decker.

In addition, Kolbeinn Jon is an accomplished concert singer and has performed major works such as Handel’s Messiah, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis and 9th Symphony, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Dvořák’s Requiem, Verdi’s Messa da Requiem, Mozart’s Requiem, Schönberg’s Gurre-Lieder, and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde.