Biography

Denis Lakey was born in Cape Town and grew up from the age of two in London. He has lived in Germany since 1992 and has dual British and German citizenship. He studied singing with Keith Davis and Robert Sutherland ant the Royal College of Music in London. He now studies with Renate Faltin in Berlin.

His unusual and extensive operatic repertoire encompasses baroque and romantic, Viennese operetta through to the 21st century and contemporary stageworks with roles such as Handel's Giulio Cesare, Ottone rè di Germania, Andronico, Tamerlano, Medoro Orlando, Andronico Tamerlano, Medoro Orlando also the First Witch Dido and Aeneas Monteverdi's Nerone L'Incoronazione di Poppea as well as Hänsel Hänsel und Gretel, Prinz Orlofsky Die Fledermaus, Britten's Oberon Midsummer Night's Dream and Voice of Apollo Death in Venice and Teufel Scherz, Satire, Ironie und tiefere Bedeutung by Detlev Glanert.

Denis Lakey has created roles in several world premieres, among them Referent/Priester/Coco Cuba Libre by Cong Su, Der Geräderte WUT by Andrea Lorenzo Scartazzini, Osmingti The Orphan by Jeffrey Ching at the Theater Erfurt and Patera Die andere Seite by Michael Obst at the Mainfranken Theater Würzburg. He also sang the role of Truth in the very first production of The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit by Gerald Barry for Channel Four Television (CD available from Largo Records, Cologne).

Denis Lakey's opera and concert engagements have taken him to London,  Rome,  Basel,  Vienna, Salzburg, Budapest, Buenos Aires, Ushuaia and Santa Cruz, Bolivia as well as the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Theater Erfurt, Staatstheater Meiningen, Staatstheater Braunschweig, Schloßtheater Potsdam, the Markgräfliche Opernhaus Bayreuth, Theater Ulm, Volkstheater Rostock, Theater Hof, Theater Krefeld/Mönchengladbach, Landstheater Salzburg, Semperdepot Vienna, Mainfranken Theater Würzburg, Theater Magdeburg, the Chamber Opera Budapest amongst others. He has sung with ensembles including the Balthasar-Neumann-Ensemble directed by Thomas Hengelbrock and the Lautten Companey Berlin led by Wolfgang Katschner. In the Sendesaal Radio Bremen Denis Lakey sang the first performances of a work commissioned by the Arno Schmidt Foundation by five different composers (in 2010 a CD was releaesed under the CPO label with the oh-ton ensemble of these works. Another CD was released in 2010 with Musica Fiorita and Denis Lakey directed by Daniela Dolci (ORF Edition Alte Musik) of the oratorio Santa Beatrice d’Este by Camilla de Rossi (1707). Most recent engagements: Sino in the world premier of George by Elena Kats-Chernin for the Theater für Niedersachsen and Alessandro nell'Indie at the Mainfranken Theater Würzburg, Arminio for the Nordharzer Städtebundtheater und Melissa La Liberazione di Ruggiero dall' isola d'Alcina von Francesca Caccini (1755) for the Brighton Early Music Festival. In 2016/2017 Denis Lakey is sang Orlofsky Die Fledermaus at the Nordharzer Städtebundtheater und Patera in the first Austrian performances of Die andere Seite for the Landestheater Linz.

2018 he performed the roles of Almira Gulch and the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz at the Stadttheater Klagenfurt and at present is singing Ernesto in a new German version of Haydn's Il mondo della luna – Die Welt auf dem Monde for the Nordharzer Städtebundtheater.

Patera DIE ANDERE SEITE Landestheater Linz. Foto: Sakher Almonem