German baritone Detlef Roth won the renowned Belvedere voice competition in Vienna in 1992 and the first "Concours des Voix Wagneriennes" in Strasbourg in 1994 while studying voice at the Musikhochschule of Stuttgart.

Performing regularly since his debut, Detlef is frequently requested as a concert soloist worldwide. He is equally at home in classics and modern repertoires. The breadth of his experience includes works by Beethoven, Haydn, Mahler, Mendelssohn, Orff, Schubert, Schumann or Zemlinsky, the Brahms and Fauré Requiems, as well as Bach oeuvres such as B Minor Mass, cantatas, masses, oratorios and passions. Modern composers include Britten, Henze, the world premieres of Geert van Keulen's "Five Tragic Songs"—after poems by Anna Enquist—and Wim Laman's Requiem—Songs.

Detlef has sung under the baton of many top conductors including Semyon Bychkov, Riccardo Chailly, Daniele Gatti, Valery Gergiev, Marek Janowski, Armin Jordan, Phillipe Jordan, Lorin Maazel, Sir Charles Mackerras, Sir Neville Mariner, Kurt Masur, Kent Nagano, Sir Simon Rattle, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Jeffrey Tate, Christian Thieleman, and David Zinman.

Known for his powerful acting skills in addition to his cultured voice, Detlef's opera career as a principal player began in Paris in 1995 at the Opera Comique in The Merry Wives of Windsor. He sang the role of Amfortas in the highly acclaimed production of Parsifal by Stefan Herheim in the Bayreuth Festival over five seasons, and reprised this iconic role in Geneva, Zurich, London, Berlin, and again in Madrid's Teatro Real in 2016.

Additional Wagner roles are Wolfram in Wagner's Tannhäuser, Kurwenal in Tristan and Isolde, Gunther in Götterdämmerung, Donner in Rheingold. He sang The Herald in Lohengrin in his La Scala debut; and sang there again as Kothner in Meistersinger in 2017. In 2015 Detlef added Pizarro in Beethoven's Fidelio to his repertoire.

Title roles include Hans Heiling in Strasbourg, France, Der Vampyr in Bologna, Italy and Tchaikovsky's Eugenin Onegin in Frankfurt. In more modern opera repertoire, Detlef has sung Pentheus in Henze's Bassarids in Amsterdam and Al Kasim in Henze's Upupa.

His comic roles include Magic Flute's Papageno sung in Paris, Rome and Frankfurt, Dulcamara in Donizetti's Elisir d'Amore, Graf von Eberbach and Czar Peter the Great in Lortzing’s Wildschütz and Czar und Zimmerman.

Detlef Roth's discography includes Carmina Burana with the Bamberg Symphonic Orchestra on DVD; several roles in operas on CD for DG, ERATO, Arte Nova; and, a prize-winning recording of unknown Schubert songs for NAXOS. He has participated in several TV-productions and in 2011 he sang a concert transmitted throughout Europe and the Internet on ARTE in Mozart et L'Amour with soprano Sandrine Piau and l'Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France.

He has sung at concert halls and opera houses throughout the capitals of Europe, North and South America, the Middle East, the Far East and beyond.

His U.S. performances have included Rheingold at Washington DC's Kennedy Center, Britten's War Requiem at Boston's Symphony Hall, three seasons with the Newport Music Festival, at Dallas' Meyerson Symphony Center, at New York's Lincoln Center, and with the New York Philharmonic in the Messiah at Avery Fisher Hall.

Detlef Roth lives in both his hometown of Freudenstadt in the Black Forest region of Germany, and in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he is also a legal U.S. resident. His language skills allow him to sing in English, French, German, Italian, Latin, even Russian.