Berthold Schmid was born in Ravensburg in 1953. After beginning his studies in school music at the conservatory in Stuttgart, he went on to study at the conservatories in Munich and Freiburg. Master classes with Paul Lohmann, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and private training with Dennis Hall.
Numerous guest appearances as a tenor with a wide-ranging repertoire from Handel to contemporary opera. As an oratorio and lieder singer, Berthold Schmid is internationally active and a guest at major festivals and concert series, e.g. Festival Estival Paris, Warsaw Autumn, Israel Festival, Intern. Festival Bergen, Biennale for New Music Zagreb, Intern. Festspiele Baden-Württemberg and many more.
Concert tours have taken him to South America, Korea, Japan, the USSR, Israel and throughout Europe. He has premiered numerous works, some of which he is the dedicatee of, and collaborated with important composers such as Schnebel, Trojahn, Reimann, Spahlinger, Heucke, Kalitzke and many others.
Berthold Schmid began his teaching career in 1979 as a lecturer at the Musikhochschule in Freiburg. From 1981 to 1989 he worked at the Karlsruhe University of Music. From 1989 to 2003 he taught at the Detmold University of Music / Dortmund department as a professor of singing. From winter semester 2003 to 2023 at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater “Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy” in Leipzig.
In addition to the methodical and scientific “tools” of teaching singing, his focus is on intuition and experience. Vocal training is always an education in human nature and the effort to “understand” the student, to empathize with the physical and mental structure of the person learning, is the only way to find the right methodological and didactic means and methods.
