Şafak Güç

Şafak Güç is a Turkish bass-baritone with more than twenty-five years of professional stage experience. Since 1999 he has been a principal artist of the Antalya State Opera and Ballet, where he has appeared across the company’s seasonal productions and on its national and international tours.

His repertoire is deliberately broad. It reaches from the dramatic weight of Verdi — Attila, Ferrando in Il Trovatore, Banquo in Macbeth, Ramfis and Il Re in Aida — to the buffo roles that ask for comic timing rather than sheer gravity, among them Dulcamara in L’elisir d’amore, Don Pasquale, and Selim in Il Turco in Italia. Between those poles sit his Mozart roles: Don Giovanni, Leporello, Il Commendatore, Figaro, Dr. Bartolo and Osmin. Puccini brings Colline in La Bohème, Timur in Turandot and Bonzo in Madama Butterfly, and the Turkish repertoire brings Adnan Bey in Selman Ada’s Aşk-ı Memnu.

In 1997 he studied at Bilkent University’s Faculty of Music and Performing Arts in the opera department, under the Romanian pedagogue Dan Serbac. Alongside his conservatory training he undertook long-term private study with the Italian baritone Licinio Montefusco — a formation that shows in the Italian line running through much of his repertoire. He sings in Turkish, Italian, German and English.

In 2003 he took first prize at the Siemens Turkey Opera Competition. He has appeared as a guest artist at the Bolshoi Theatre and on other international stages. On the concert platform he has sung the bass solos in Verdi’s Messa da Requiem and Mozart’s Requiem in D minor, K. 626.