Biography

He begins the 25/26 season as Amfortas in a production of Parsifal by Matthew Ozawa at the San Francisco Opera with Eun Sun Kim conducting. Next, he makes his debut with the Czech Philharmonic as the title role in Dalla Piccola’s Il Prigioniero, under the baton of Antonio Pappano. He then returns to the Opéra national de Paris as Alberich for the new Calixto Bieto production of Siegfried with Pablo Heras-Casado conducting. Next, Mulligan joins the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest at the Concertgebouw with Karina Canellakis conducting, as Balstrode in Peter Grimes. Mulligan then returns to the Rotterdam Philharmonic to sing Der Wanderer in Siegfried with Yannick Nézet-Séguin, on a tour of Europe with performances in the Netherlands, Germany and at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. He closes the season as Barak in Die Frau ohne Schatten for his debut at Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, in a new production by Barrie Kosky and under the baton of Klaus Mäkelä.

Mr Mulligan opened his 2024/25 season in the title role of Der fliegende Holländer at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam with Jaap van Zweden conducting the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest. He then returned to the Lyric Opera of Chicago as Don Pizarro in Fidelio, after which he made his role debut as Der Wanderer in Siegfried at the Hangzhou Philharmonic in China with Markus Stenz conducting. Mulligan then made another role debut, as Alberich in Das Rheingold with Pablo Heras-Casado conducting a new production by Calixto Bieito at the Opéra National de Paris. Next, he returned to the Teatro San Carlo di Napoli as Jochanaan in Salome with Dan Ettinger conducting, after which he again sang Holländer with the Philharmonie Luxembourg for performances in Luxembourg and Brussels. Mulligan then made his debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra as Kurwenal in Tristan und Isolde under the baton of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, before returning to the San Francisco Opera for their Pride Gala. He finished the season again as the Dutchman, in his debut with the Taiwan Philharmonic in Taipei.

In the 2023/24 season, he sang Telramund in Lohengrin at San Francisco Opera, before heading to Toulouse to sing Barak in Die Frau ohne Schatten. Together with the Rotterdam Philharmonic under Yannick Nézet-Séguin, he toured amongst others to Baden-Baden and Paris singing Wotan in Die Walküre. He also performed and recorded Brahms’ Deutsches Requiem with the Bergen Philharmonic under Edward Gardener. At the Teatro Regio Torino, he gave his role debut as The Flying Dutchman.

In 2022/23 Mulligan was seen as Kurwenal (Tristan und Isolde) in Naples and at the Teatro Real in Madrid. Additional highlights of the season were Heerrufer in a new production of Lohengrin under the baton of Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Faninal in the new Rosenkavalier under Simone Young, both at the Metropolitan Opera. He performed in the 100^th Anniversary Concert of San Francisco Opera conducted by Sir Donald Runnicles, Patrick Summers and Eun Sun Kim.

Valentin (Faust), Golaud (Pélleas et Mélisande), Chorèbe (Les Troyens), Nélusko (L’Africaine), and the eponymous role in Ambroise Thomas’ Hamlet are some of his French roles.

With parts such as Balstrode (Peter Grimes), Sweeney Todd, Prospero (The Tempest), Nixon (Nixon in China), Klinghoffer (The Death of Klinghoffer), and John Proctor (The Crucible), Brian Mulligan is also a proponent of English-language opera. The artist has also created several successful world premieres, including James Primosch’s Songs for Adam with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Greg Spears’ song cycle Walden at the Kennedy Center in Washington. Critics praised him for his outstanding performance as Jack Torrance in Paul Moravec’s The Shining at Minnesota Opera in 2016.

The internationally renowned artist performs regularly at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the San Francisco Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Houston Opera, the opera houses in Amsterdam, Antwerp, Frankfurt, and Zurich, as well as at major festivals such as the Salzburg Festival, the Wiener Festwochen, the Saito Kinan Festival in Japan, the Wexford Opera Festival and the Aspen Music Festival.