Ricardo Llamas Márquez is a Spanish bass-baritone. Initially trained in violin, piano, and composition, he began singing in 2009 with Francisco José Comino Crespo. He studied at the Conservatorio Superior de Música Manuel Castillo in Seville with Rosa María de Alba and later at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in Leipzig, completing Meisterklasse studies under Roland Schubert (2016–2019).
He has worked with renowned singers and teachers including Juan Jesús Rodríguez, Thomas Hampson, Carlos Chausson, and Sabina Puértolas. Alongside opera, he has cultivated a strong interest in physical comedy, training in Commedia dell’Arte, clowning, mime, and improvisation with Antonio Fava and others.
In the 2024/25 season he has debuted the roles of Wurm in the opera Luisa Miller by G. Verdi, at the Osnabrück Theater (Germany), König Krax in Die Reise zu Planet 9 by P. Valtinoni at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf, and Sarastro in The Magic Flute by W.A. Mozart, and Don Magnifico in La Cenerentola by G. Rossini, both at the Theater Detmold, where he is ensemble member.
Next season at Landestheather Detmold will bring the roles of Don Profondo in Il viaggio a Reims by G. Rossini, Harashta in The cunning little vixen by L. Janacek, and Melisso in Alcina by G. F. Händel.
He has performed in major German theatres as well as in Spain and France, with roles such as Ogro (Puss in Boots), Dottore Grenvil (La Traviata), Marullo (Rigoletto), Page/Familiare di Nottingham (Roberto Devereux), Mandarin (Li Tai Pe), Don Alfonso (Così fan tutte), Dulcamara (L’elisir d’amore), Nikitich (Boris Godunov), Orazio (Amleto), Marchese d´Ovigny (La Traviata), Deputato (Don Carlo), Marullo (Rigoletto), Cecco del Vecchio (Rienzi), Commisario Imperiale (Madama Butterfly), Conte di Ceprano (Rigoletto).
He made his debut in the role of Pizarro in 2021 in Berlin for a film version of L. Van Beethoven’s Fidelio, and has performed other major roles in various productions of the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in Leipzig: Achilla (Giulio Cesare), Alberich (Das Rheingold), Leporello (Don Giovanni), Kaspar (Der Freischütz).
In concert, he has sung Mozart’s and Fauré’s Requiems, Bach’s St. John Passion, and Eslava’s Miserere, with orchestras including the Seville Symphony, Madrid Philharmonic, and Málaga Symphony.
Awards include the Pedro Lavirgen Prize (2023), finalist at Nuevas Voces de Sevilla (2021), Third Prize at the Alida Vane Competition in Latvia (2019), and a scholarship from the Richard-Wagner-Verband Leipzig (2016).
