Levent
Bakirci
Reviews
BIOGRAPHY
Born in Ankara, he was a member of the Theater Bremen ensemble from 2008 to 2011, debuting in several roles such as Don Giovanni, Evgenij Onegin, Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Sharpless in Madama Butterfly, Ping in Turandot, Falke in Die Fledermaus, Cahit in Ludger Vollmer's Gegen die Wand at the Stuttgart Opera, Cecco in Il mondo della luna at the Teatro Verdi in Trieste, Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor in Tel Aviv, Belcore in L'elisir d'amore and Starek in Jenufa at the Istanbul Opera
Levent recently performed as Papageno in Die Zauberflöte at the Teatro delle Muse in Ancona, a concert with music by Erardo Trentinaglia and Igor Stravinsky's Canticum Sacrum ad honorem Sancti Marci nominis at the Basilica di San Marco, both for the Teatro La Fenice in Venice. He also took part in the Da Ponte & Friends show at the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza for the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa and also played Frank (Die Fledermaus) also at the Carlo Felice Genoa, under the direction of Fabio Luisi. He also starred in Rigoletto at Bühnen Halle. His upcoming engagements 2023/24 include Don Arias (Le vita è sogno by G. Malipiero) at Teatro La Fenice and Frank (Die Fledermaus) at the NCPA in Beijing.
His other recent engagements include Don Giovanni (title role) at the Teatro Municipal Santiago de Chile, Un giorno di regno at the Verdi Festival in Parma, and Dallapiccola's Il Prigioniero at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Festival where, in 2019, he also sings Aribert Reimann's Lear (Gloucester), conducted by Fabio Luisi, who also invited him to the Seiji Ozawa Festival for Evgenij Onegin (lead). He also sang Das Rheingold (Alberich) with the Orquesta Sinfónica del Estado de México, Manon (Lescaut) at the Staatstheater Nürnberg and From the house of dead at the Brun Janacek Festival.
Other highlights of his career certainly include his debut at the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse as the lead in Luigi Dallapiccola's Il Prigioniero (2015) and at Teatr Wielki in Warsaw in E. Knapik's Moby Dick (Captain Ahap), as well as Roméo et Juliette (Mercutio) with the Münchner Rundfunk Orchester.
He has collaborated with, among others, conductors such as Michael Boder, Alvise Casellati, Tito Ceccherini, Fabio Luisi, Markus Stenz, Keri Lynn Wilson and, among directors, Lotte de Beer, Calixto Bieito, Robert Carsen, Mariame Clement, Pierre Constant, Massimo Gasparon, Paolo Gavazzeni, Tatjana Gürbaca, Michael Hampe, Peter Konwitchny, Cesare Lievi, Piero Maranghi, Pier Luigi Pizzi, Laura Scozzi, Lydia Steier, Beppe de Tomasi, Keith Warner.
In the 2015/18 seasons, he was a member of the ensemble of the Staatstheater Nürnberg, performing in various roles such as Don Giovanni, Papageno (Die Zauberflöte), Taddeo (L'Italiana in Algeri), the Count of Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro), Escamillo (Carmen), Zurga (Les pêcheurs de perles), Marcello (La Bohème) and Schelkalov (Boris Godunov).