Born on the Greek island Rhodos, the internationally renowned baritone Dimitris Tiliakos studied singing and viola at the Athaeneum Conservatory in in Athens. After winning the Maria Callas Prize, he continued his studies at the Munich Conservatory where he was awarded with the W.D-Fassbaender Prize for young baritones and made his stage debut as Conte Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro staged by Claus Guth at the Prinzregententheater. He subsequently joined the ensemble of the Nürnberg State Theatre, where he performed numerous roles of the baritone repertoire.
2008 saw his triumphant debuts as Posa in Don Carlo at Royal Opera House Covent Garden and shortly after at the Opéra national de Paris. He since has achieved worldwide recognition and has appeared at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Teatro Real in Madrid, the Liceu in Barcelona, Hamburg State Opera, the Dresden Semperoper, Opéra de Monte-Carlo, Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam, Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Bruxelles, and Cologne Opera, among numerous others.
In June 2023 he made his cheered role debut in the title role of Don Pasquale in Zurich. He further scored recent successes in the title role of Simon Boccanegra at the Essen Opera, as Ruprecht in Prokofjev’s The fiery Angel in Madrid, Scarpia at the Stuttgart State Opera, Comte de Nevers in Les Huguenots in Dresden and at the Deutsche Oper Berlin or Rigoletto in Tel Aviv and at the Theatre of Herodes Atticus in Athens.
His repertoire includes Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Conte Almaviva as well as the leading baritone roles by Verdi and Puccini, such as Macbeth, Rigoletto, Iago, Conte di Luna, Simon Boccanegra, Carlo di Vargas, Scarpia, Marcello and Sharpless and also Escamillo in Carmen, Ruprecht in The fiery Angel or Fjodor in Rimsky-Korssakov’s The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh.
He regularly works with conductors such as Evelino Pido, Carlo Rizzi, Antonio Pappano, Giuliano Carella, Alain Altinoglou, Teodor Currentzis, Myung-Whun Chung or Marc Minkowski as well as stage directors including Claus Guth, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Robert Carsen, Bob Wilson, Barrie Kosky, Christoph Loy or Graham Vick.
He has made several recordings on CD and DVD and holds master classes in Athens, Brussels and Stuttgart.