Klaus König

Klaus König (26 May 1934 – 7 June 2025) was a German operatic tenor focused on heldentenor roles including Wagner's Tannhäuser, Lohengrin and Parsifal. Based at the Staatsoper Dresden, he made an international career, performing as Tannhäuser at the Royal Opera House in London and La Scala in Milan in 1984. He performed the tenor solo in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, conducted by Leonard Bernstein at the Konzerthaus Berlin after the Fall of the Berlin Wall. At the time of his death in 2025, Place de l'Opera magazine described him as "one of the most important tenors of his generation, especially in the heroic tenor repertoire." He appeared as Tannhäuser also at the Paris Opera. He appeared regularly at the festival in Görlitz, for example Bruckner's Te Deum in 1996 and the tenor part in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in 1998.

König gradually ended his operatic career from 2000;

He was honoured with the title Kammersänger by the Staatsoper Dresden in 1984 and with the Nationalpreis der DDR in art and literature in 1985. He recorded Tannhäuser with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and choir conducted by Bernard Haitink in 1985, alongside Waltraud Meier as Venus, Lucia Popp as Elisabeth, Bernd Weikl as Wolfram and Kurt Moll as Hermann; Alan Blyth noted that he sang with "a truly Wagnerian timbre and authority" and "suitable force and anguish" for the character's "vein of inner torture".