Biography

Matthias Daehling is a German countertenor currently studying for a Master’s degree at the Royal College of Music with Sally Burgess. He is generously supported in the UK as a RCM award holder and a DAAD scholar for the 2022/23 academic year.

In June 2021 he graduated from his undergraduate studies at the School of Music and Theatre Hamburg, where he studied with Mark Tucker. In October 2021 Matthias Daehling made his stage debut in a new production of Shostakovich’s “The Nose” at the Bayerische Staatsoper Munich under the baton of Vladimir Jurowski.

Matthias is passionate about song repertoire and increasing the recognition for the countertenor voice in this area. He is part of the 2022/23 'Wigmore Hall French Song Exchange’ and will appear in recitals at the Wigmore Hall in London and the Salle Cortot in Paris. In the 2023/24 season, Matthias will be a member of the Monteverdi Choir ‘Young Apprentices’ scheme and will go on tour with the Monteverdi Choir under the direction of Sir John Eliot Gardiner throughout Europe.

His latest appearances include CD recordings of Telemann cantatas with both the Neumeyer Consort and barockwerk hamburg as well as various soloistic performances in Germany and the UK. Another recent highlight include the first performances of two newly composed mini-operas, co-produced by the RCM and the opera company Tête-à-Tête.

Matthias Dähling began his musical education at the age of 7, learning the violin, later the piano and viola. He obtained a Bachelor's degree in viola performance under Professor Boris Faust at the HfMT Hamburg in March 2020.

In October 2016, Matthias Dähling began his artistic training as a countertenor with Professor Yvi Jänicke at the HfMT Hamburg. From April 2019, he continued his singing studies with Professor Mark Tucker.

At the end of 2017, he appeared in a Christmas service that was broadcast live throughout Germany on ARD television. In March 2018, Matthias Dähling was awarded third prize in the Mozart Competition at the HfMT Hamburg. In the same year, he was featured in a segment on the program "Das!-Magazin" on NDR television, when countertenor Max Emanuel Cencic was a guest. Since then, Matthias Dähling has performed as a soloist in Germany and throughout Europe with ensembles such as barockwerk hamburg (2021 in the role of Anaximenes in Carl Heinrich Graun's opera "Iphigenia in Aulis") or the baroque ensemble Shirokko.

Before moving to London, Matthias Dähling was awarded the Deutschlandstipendium in 2017. From 2018 to 2020, he was a scholarship holder of the Oscar and Vera Ritter Foundation. During the same period, Matthias regularly performed with his duo partner LvJie Zhang in concerts organized by "Yehudi Menuhin - Live Music Now e.V." He furthered his singing studies in lessons with Professor Gabriele Fuchs and Max Emanuel Cencic, as well as in masterclasses with Michael Chance, Daniel Taylor, Ian Partridge, Deborah York, Lynn Dawson, and Philippe Jaroussky.

Since 2016 he has been studying privately with German alto Ulla Groenewold, Hamburg.