Gösta Winbergh

Winbergh studied to become a construction engineer, and sang in a rock band. He saw his first opera performance in 1967, which is strange since Carl Martin Öhman was his uncle. Anyway, he studied voice from 1969 to 1971, as per Kutsch & Riemens with Öhman, Erik Saedén and Hjördis Schymberg, although we can safely exclude Öhman, who had died in 1967 and is unlikely to have continued teaching voice as a ghost.

Winbergh made his debut as Rodolfo in Göteborg in 1971 and was a member of the Royal Opera House Stockholm from 1973 to 1981 (he would regularly return as a guest later on). Guest appearances, during his Stockholm years, in Copenhagen, San Francisco, Zürich, Aix-en-Provence and Hamburg.

He then embarked on a world career. House debuts:
1981: Munich
1982: Vienna Staatsoper, Salzburg Festival, Covent Garden
1983: Metropolitan Opera, Geneva
1985: La Scala
1986: Teatre del Liceu
1988: Chicago, Houston
1991: Bonn
1993: Deutsche Oper Berlin
1999: Mariinskij Theater
The most important theaters for his career were the Vienna Staatsoper (91 performances until the evening before his death from a heart attack), Zürich and the Salzburg Festival. At the New York Met, he sang 31 evenings until 1995.

In the 1990s, he successfully shifted his repertory from Ferrando, Tamino, Don Ottavio, Belmonte, Tito and Alfredo to Florestan, Lohengrin, Parsifal, Stolzing, Erik, Siegmund and even Tristan.

Reference 1: Kutsch & Riemens, reference 2, reference 3: Vienna Staatsoper archives, reference 4: Metropolitan Opera archives

I would like to thank Thomas Silverbörg for the recordings and pictures.