The San Antonio-raised singer who swept the Operalia competition brings Puccini and Donizetti to Hans Scharoun’s famous hall on 2 November 2026, under Maestro Arkady Beryn.
American opera is well represented in Europe this autumn. On Monday, 2 November 2026, tenor René Barbera – born in Laredo, raised in San Antonio, trained at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts – takes the stage of the Philharmonie Berlin for the Operngala-Nacht with the Filharmonie Brno under Maestro Arkady Beryn, alongside French baritone Florian Sempey and soprano Alisa Medvedeva.
Barbera’s path is the American system at its best. He won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in 2008 while still a student, passed through San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program and the Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago, and in 2011 became the first singer in the history of Plácido Domingo’s Operalia competition to win the opera prize, the zarzuela prize and the audience prize in one year. His Metropolitan Opera debut followed in 2016 in Rossini’s L’italiana in Algeri. Since then he has sung at La Scala, the Opéra de Paris, the Vienna and Bavarian State Operas and the Arena di Verona, and made recent role debuts as Rodolfo in La Bohème in Rome and Naples. Opera News praised his “old-fashioned warmth”.
In Berlin he sings exactly that repertoire: Rodolfo’s “Che gelida manina” from La Bohème, and Nemorino’s “Una furtiva lagrima” from L’elisir d’amore – a role he has sung at La Scala, in Hamburg, Turin and Palermo – before joining his colleagues for the Brindisi from La traviata.
His colleagues are no less credentialed.
Florian Sempey, a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, made his name as Rossini’s Figaro at the Opéra de Paris, Covent Garden and the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro and brings “Largo al factotum”, the Toreador Song from Carmen and Don Giovanni’s “Fin ch’han dal vino” to the evening.
Alisa Medvedeva, a Saint Petersburg Conservatoire graduate now based in Geneva who has appeared with Andrea Bocelli and Il Divo, sings Musetta’s “Quando me’n vo”, Bellini’s “Oh! quante volte” and the duet “Là ci darem la mano”.
The Filharmonie Brno, one of the Czech Republic’s leading orchestras since 1956, fills the rest of the programme: the Polonaise from Eugene Onegin, the overtures to Le nozze di Figaro, La forza del destino and La gazza ladra, the intermezzi from Manon Lescaut and Cavalleria rusticana, the finale of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, a Dvořák Slavonic Dance and the Brazilian “Tico Tico no fubá”.
Maestro Prof. Arkady Beryn, who conducts, has been on the podium for more than forty years. Chief Conductor of the Internationale Symphoniker Deutschland from 2003 to 2011, he has led orchestras from the Berliner Symphoniker and the Camerata Salzburg to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, and has appeared in the Vienna Musikverein, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the Philharmonie Berlin. He has worked with singers of the calibre of José Carreras, Roberto Alagna, Aida Garifullina and Maria Guleghina and with instrumentalists including Maxim Vengerov, Mischa Maisky and Daniel Hope – and a German headline once put it simply: “Dirigent Beryn ist der Star”.
For American visitors, the hall itself is a landmark: Scharoun’s 1963 “vineyard” design, with 2,440 seats surrounding the stage, was the model for Los Angeles’s Walt Disney Concert Hall.
EVENT INFORMATION
Operngala-Nacht – Opera Gala at the Philharmonie Berlin
Monday, 2 November 2026, 20:00
Philharmonie Berlin – Großer Saal
Herbert-von-Karajan-Straße 1, 10785 Berlin, Germany
Conductor: Maestro Arkady Beryn
Soloists: René Barbera, tenor; Florian Sempey, baritone; Alisa Medvedeva, soprano
Orchestra: Filharmonie Brno (Brno Philharmonic)
Programme: Arias, duets, overtures and intermezzi by Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Puccini, Bizet, Verdi, Mascagni, Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini, Dvořák and Zequinha de Abreu
Tickets: from €26.50 via Eventim – eventim.de/artist/philharmonie-berlin/operngala-nacht-philhamonie-berlin-4122419
Event page: Philharmonie Berlin – berliner-philharmoniker.de/en/concert/calendar/57371
Event listing: visitBerlin – visitberlin.de/en/event/brno-philharmonic-opera-gala-night