Benedikt Kristjansson
Benedikt Kristjansson was born in 1987 in Iceland. He started his singing lessons at age of 16 with his mother, Margret Boasdottir at the Reykjavik Academy of Singing and Vocal Arts and graduated from the Reykjavík Conservatory of Music in 2007. For six years he was a member of the renowned high school choir Hamrahlidarkorinn, also appearing as a soloist. Since 2008 he studies with Professor Scot Weir at the Academy of Music Hanns Eisler Berlin, and has taken masterclasses with Christa Ludwig, Peter Schreier, Elly Ameling, Robert Holl, Thomas Quasthoff, Andreas Schmidt and Helmut Deutsch.
Benedikt won the 1st prize of the International Bach Vocal Competition in
Greifswald in 2011, and was also awarded the Audience Prize. He was the Winner of the Audience Award in the International Bach Competition in Leipzig 2012. With Guitarist Sergio CotoBlanco he won the 3rd Prize of the International Competition for Chamber Music with Guitar 2010 in Aschaffenburg. He was awarded the Prize of The Most Promising Young Artist in classical/modern music at the Icelandic Music Awards in 2012 and was granted a scholarship from the Jean Pierre Jaquilliat Fund in Reykjavik in 2012.
Benedikt has performed in numerous concerts; he sung the evangelist and tenor arias in the Bach’s Passions and Christmas Oratorio in Reykjavik, Berlin, Oslo, Zürich, Den Haag and Jerusalem. In December 2012, Benedikt sang the title role in the children’s opera Das tapfere Schneiderlein by Wolfgang Mitterer, in the Staatsoper Berlin. Also at the Staasoper he has sung the title role of Janacek’s Diary of the one who Disappeared. At Theater Kiel he sung in the production of Atys by Jean-Baptitste Lully.
He has given lied recitals with Schumann’s Dichterliebe in Iceland, and Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin in Iceland and Germany.