Biography
Quirijn de Lang is widely known as an exceptional singing actor in a wide and varied repertoire. Equally successful as Ambroise Thomas’ Hamlet and Fred/Petrucchio in Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate, he is at home in the traditional operatic baritone repertoire as well as the world of operetta and classic musicals.
Showcasing this wide variety of styles, upcoming projects include Randy Curtis in Kurt Weill's Lady in the Dark, Papageno in a modern reworking of The Magic Flute at Welsh National Opera, Zurga in Les Pêcheurs de Perles for Opera North, and Oppenheimer in John Adam's Doctor Atomic in Utrecht, the Netherlands.
He was performing as Count Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro and Harry Easter in Street Scene for Opera North, when the first Covid-19 lockdown came into effect.
His debut as Fredrik Egerman in Sondheim’s A Little Night Music took place in June 2021 at the Leeds Playhouse and was rewarded with 5 stars across the board.
Back in the Netherlands, Quirijn de Lang presented a song program: De Stille Stad, The Quiet City, which describes the turmoil of the 2020 Covid-lockdown.
He returned to Opera North this Autumn as Sam in their celebrated production of Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti and curated and performed a concert of The Great American Songbook together with Sandra Piques Eddy.
2022 saw him as Count Almaviva in David Pountney’s opera Figaro Gets a Divorce, in Magdeburg, Germany, Covering Orphée in the world première of Manfred Trojahn's Eurydice - Die Liebenden Blind, Theseus/A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Opera Zuid in the Netherlands, and returning to the Leeds Playhouse for a reprise of Fredrik Egerman in A Little Night Music.
Quirijn de Lang made his British debut at the Garsington Festival as Harlekin in 2007. He has subsequently become a regular visitor to the UK, building particularly strong relationships with the summer festivals at Grange Park, Garsington and at Opera North, with roles such as Der Graf/Capriccio, Schaunard/La bohème, Dandini/ La Cenerentola, Guglielmo/Così fan tutte, Yeletsky/Pikovaya Dama, Demetrius/A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Count Almaviva/The Marriage of Figaro, Sam/Trouble in Tahiti, Danilo/The Merry Widow, Lieutenant Audebert/Silent Night, and Fred-Petrucchio/Kiss Me, Kate, which he has also performed for Welsh National Opera, and at the London Coliseum.
Quirijn de Lang has performed over 70 roles in his career and every year adds new ones to this impressive list.
Even during his studies at the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, he made his professional stage debut as Papageno for the Nederlandse Reisopera, subsequently singing in many of the major European opera houses, such as Deutsche Oper Berlin, The Netherlands Opera, La Monnaie, and English National Opera, in roles such as Pantalon/L'Amour des trois oranges, Harlekin/Ariadne auf Naxos, Ottokar/Der Freischütz, Malatesta/Don Pasquale, and Don Giovanni.
Born in Holland of Dutch and Indonesian descent, Quirijn spent some of his childhood in Japan. After studying biology at the University of Amsterdam, he studied singing at the Milanese Scuola di Musica, and received his Bachelors and Masters in Music and Opera at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. During the Covid lockdowns he developed himself as a newsreader, journalist and television presenter in his hometown of Haarlem, the Netherlands, producing a television series about the two cathedrals there.
