He sang Schubert to homesick prisoners before conquering opera
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau spent two years as an American prisoner of war in 1945, singing Lieder to homesick German soldiers. Within two years he launched a professional career without rehearsal, substituting in Brahms's German Requiem. He would dominate opera and concert platforms for over thirty years and record the complete Schubert lieder for male voice.
Born in Berlin in 1925, Fischer-Dieskau began formal voice lessons at sixteen. Drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1943, he entertained comrades behind the lines before capture in Italy. His brother Martin, deemed impaired by the Nazi regime, starved in an institution; the family home was destroyed. Returning to Germany in 1947, he made his professional debut in Badenweiler as a last-minute substitute in Brahms's Ein Deutsches Requiem with no rehearsal, then triumphed at Berlin's Titania-Palast.
From 1948 he was principal lyric baritone at Berlin's Städtische Oper, debuting as Posa in Verdi's Don Carlos under Ferenc Fricsay—a conductor who joked he never dreamed of finding an Italian baritone in Berlin. His 1951 Salzburg debut with Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen under Wilhelm Furtwängler launched international touring. In 1955 his American debut included Schubert's Winterreise at New York's Town Hall without an interval, accompanied by Gerald Moore. Their partnership produced a landmark complete recording of Schubert lieder for male voice by 1972.
Critics ranked him among the supreme vocal artists of the twentieth century; a 1999 Classic CD critics' poll placed him just after Jussi Björling in a century-wide singers ranking. He performed contemporary works by Britten, Henze, and Barber; Britten chose him for the baritone solo in War Requiem. Retiring from opera in 1978 and concerts on New Year's Day 1993 at age sixty-seven, he turned to conducting, teaching, painting, and writing. He died at home in Bavaria on 18 May 2012, ten days before his eighty-seventh birthday—leaving recordings that, half a century on, still set the standard for art-song interpretation.
Source: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
