Barry McDaniel

Barry McDaniel (born October 18, 1930 in Lyndon, Kansas) is an American operatic baritone who spent his career almost exclusively in Germany. He was also a celebrated concert singer and recitalist.

McDaniel was born to musical parents (a vaudeville tenor-turned-storekeeper and a music teacher) who soon became aware of his talent; from the age of nine he took systematic lessons in singing, piano and percussion and enjoyed considerable local popularity as a boy soprano soloist in churches and private concerts. When his voice changed from soprano to baritone, he studied voice first at the University of Kansas, and from 1950 at the Juilliard School of Music in New York as a student of the famous baritone and voice teacher Mack Harrell. After graduating from Juilliard with honors, he was among the first young singers to go to Germany on a Fulbright scholarship in 1953. He studied with Alfred Paulus and Hermann Reutter at the Stuttgart Music Conservatory, working on his already extensive repertoire of German and French art song and making his first professional appearances as a recitalist. Hermann Reutter – a renowned composer in his own right – was to become one of his favorite accompanists throughout his career. After a first contract with the opera of Mainz (1954 – 1955), he had to put his budding operatic career on hold for two years to serve his military service in the U.S. Army; from 1957 to 1958 he was under contract with the Stuttgart State Opera, and from 1959 at the opera of Karlsruhe. It was there that in autumn 1961 Egon Seefehlner, the deputy director and talent scout of the newly reopened Deutsche Oper Berlin, heard him in a performance and recruited him for his opera.

McDaniel remained under contract with the Deutsche Oper from 1962 till 1999, appearing in productions of some of Germany's most distinguished stage directors such as , Götz Friedrich or Günther Rennert, in an ensemble that included names like Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Elisabeth Grümmer, Josef Greindl, Ernst Haefliger, James King, Pilar Lorengar and Edith Mathis. His stage repertoire of 98 roles encompassed Gluck and Mozart, Italian Bel canto and Richard Strauss as well as contemporary opera (many of these parts he performed for the first time on stage).

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