Acclaimed throughout the world for his beautiful lyric voice, strong stage presence and remarkable agility, lyric tenor Steve Davislim is in demand internationally on both concert and operatic stages. He began his professional career as an ensemble member of the Zurich Opera, where his roles included Almaviva/Il barbiere di Siviglia, Steersman/Der fliegende Holländer, Camille/Die lustige Witwe, Tamino/Die Zauberflöte, The Painter/Lulu, Don Ottavio/Don Giovanni and Ferrando/Così fan tutte with Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Der Prinz in Heinz Holliger’s Schneewittchen.
He began his musical training as a horn player and studied voice at the Victorian College of the Arts with Dame Joan Hammond. He then also studied with Gösta Winbergh, Ileana Cotrubas, Luigi Alva and attended Irwin Gage’s Lieder class.
Engaged at the most prestigious opera theatres and concert venues world-wide, he has appeared at the State Opera Berlin (Almaviva), State Opera Vienna (Tamino), Hamburg Opera (Lensky/Onegin, Tom/The Rake’s Progress, Almaviva), Royal Opera House Covent Garden (Fenton/Falstaff), The Australian Opera in Sydney (Don Ottavio, Lensky, David/Die Meistersinger), at the Chatelet Paris in the title role in Weber’s Oberon, Lyric Opera Chicago (Jacquino/Fidelio) under Christoph von Dohnanyi , Pedrillo/Die Entführung at the Met and with the Semperoper Dresden as Tom in The Rake’s Progress. A turning point in his career was his interpretation of Idomeneo at the opening of La Scala di Milano in December 2005 under Daniel Harding. He was subsequently invited back to La Scala in 2007 to sing the title role in the world premiere of Teneke by Fabio Vacchi under Roberto Abbado and will sing in concerts there in 2010 and the role of Tamino/Zauberflöte in 2011. Davislim also performed a much acclaimed Görge in Zemlinsky’s Traumgörge in the Deutsche Oper Berlin.
Steve Davislim has performed with the most prestigious orchestras in the Europe, Australia and the US including the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra; the Cleveland, San Francisco and Chicago Symphony Orchestras; the Royal Danish Orchestra, the Symphony Orchestras of Zurich, Vienna, Turin, Madrid, Dresden, Paris, Rome (Santa Cecilia) Brussels, Lyon at the BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony and Phil., Vienna Phil., Berlin Phil. all the radio orchestras of Germany and also at the BBC Proms, New York Lincoln Center Festival and Mostly Mozart Festival and the Salzburg and Lucerne Festivals.
Recently he performed Haydn’s Creation with William Christie on tour, A Child of Our Time with Sir Colin Davis at the Barbican London, St. Matthew Passion in Munich and Boston with Haitink, and Messiah in Washington. He has worked with such esteemed conductors as Claudio Abbado, Yuri Ahronovitch, Sir Colin Davis, Rafaele Frühbeck de Burgos, Adam Fischer, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Valery Gergiev, Michael Gielen, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Bernard Haitink, Thomas Hengelbrock, René Jacobs, Armin Jordan, Lorin Maazel, Marc Minkowski, Sir Roger Norrington, Antonio Pappano, Michel Plasson, Sir Georg Solti, Riccardo Chailly, Marcello Viotti, Jeffery Tate, Franz Welser-Möst, Philippe Herreweghe and David Zinman.
The season 2009/10 saw him singing L’Arborio di Diana at the Liceu Barcelona, Max in Der Freischütz in Baden Baden with Hengelbrock and Candide at the Vienna Konzerthaus. Concert engagements include Beethoven’s Symphony no. 9 with Christian Thielemann in Munich, and again in Vienna’s Musikverein with Haselböck and a tour with John Eliot Gardiner and the London Symphony Orchestra, Elijah with the Munich Philharmonic, Liszt’s Faust Symphony at the Tonhalle in Zürich with Alan Gilbert, Schumann’s Faust Szenen at La Scala and with Hogwood and the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig.
He has recorded Martinu’s Julietta with Sir Charles Mackerras and later performed this with the Berlin Philharmonic, sang a recital of Die Schöne Müllerin with Gerold Huber in Vienna’s Konzerthaus and performed Haydn’s Creation with Martin Haselböck and the Sydney Symphony as well as Handel’s Messiah at the Musikverein Vienna. He has also recorded and performed the tenor solo in Szymanowski’s Lied der Nacht with Pierre Boulez with the Vienna Philharmonic in the Musikverein.