An accomplished and highly sought-after voice teacher, baritone Wolfgang Brendel has discovered and cultivated numerous international vocal talents both established and emerging. With over 20 years of dedicated teaching experience and a performing career spanning 4 decades and 80 operatic roles, Professor Brendel contributes an unmatched breadth of performance experience, pedagogical expertise, and industry wisdom to his vocal studio. Prof. Brendel currently serves on the voice faculty at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music.

Prior to his appointment at the Jacobs School in 2011, Brendel served on the voice faculty at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich, Germany. As a visiting professor, he has held teaching positions at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Boston University Opera Institute, New England Conservatory, and Boston University. Well-regarded as a mentor to young artists, he has frequently been engaged as a guest instructor and master teacher at numerous high-level artist training programs, including San Francisco Opera’s Merola Opera program, the Mozarteum Academy, the Wagner Academy S’Hergotenbosch, and the young artist program at the Bayerische Staatsoper.

Professor Brendel’s students have graced the stages of top international houses, including the Bayerische Staatsoper, Cologne Opera, Staatsoper Stuttgart, Münster Opera, Semperoper Dresden, Düsseldorf Opera, and more. In the United States, his students have been engaged as young artists with The Glimmerglass Festival, Wolf Trap Opera, Opera Saratoga, and Palm Beach Opera, among others.

During his studies at the Conservatory Wiesbaden in Germany, Brendel studied voice under the master teacher Rolff Sartorious, who discovered and nurtured his talent at a young age and guided him to early competitive success at the Music Universities and Conservatories of Germany Voice Competition, in which Prof. Brendel took 1st Place. Subsequent international engagements (including major roles at the Metropolitan Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, and Deutsche Oper Berlin) led him to the famous Berlin throat specialist Dr. Theodore Rüffer, an expert in the Italian bel canto style of singing. Prof. Brendel’s teaching style draws from years of practical experience in opera, and is rooted in bel canto principles of singing, prioritizing the synthesis of the brain, emotion, and the body.

Brendel’s achievements in opera have been recognized by numerous organizations including the German government, who awarded him the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic for his outstanding service to the arts. At his home theater, the Bayerische Staatsoper, he remains to this date the youngest singer to have been granted the honorable title of Kammersänger.