Franz Xaver Schlecht

Franz Xaver Schlecht studied singing at the conservatories in Augsburg, Leipzig and Würzburg. After a one-year engagement at the Landestheater Coburg, he has been a member of the ensemble at the Leipzig Opera since 2018. His roles there include Figaro (“l barbiere di Siviglia”), Belcore (“L'elisir d'amore”), Enrico (“Lucia di Lammermoor”) and Giorgio Germont (“La traviata”). He enjoyed notable success with the solo role of George III (“Eight Songs for a Mad King”) in the acclaimed production “Majesty and Madness”. His repertoire also includes operetta roles such as Danilo (“The Merry Widow”) and Gabriel von Eisenstein (“Die Fledermaus”).
Guest engagements have taken him to the Staatsoper Berlin, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Komische Oper Berlin, the Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern and the Theater Heidelberg, among others. He has worked with directors such as Ilaria Lanzino, Francisco Negrin, David Pountney, Matthias Davids and Rolando Villazón and conductors such as Ivan Repušić, Jonathan Darlington, Ulf Schirmer, Giedrė Šlekytė, Christoph Gedschold and Yura Yang.
His concert repertoire includes the great oratorio works of Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Friedrich Händel, Joseph Haydn, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and Johannes Brahms, which he has performed in the Herkulessaal at the Munich Residenz and in Hamburg's “Michel”, among others. Concert engagements have taken him to Finland, Italy and Israel.
In the 2024/2025 season, he will be at the Opera Leipzig in the title role of Don Giovanni and as the Tsar (“Zar und Zimmermann”). At the Deutsche Oper am Rhein he will make his house debut as Oropax in the family opera “Die Reise zu Planet 9”.