Albert Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau was born in Berlin to Albert, a principal, and Dora, a teacher. He started singing as a child and began formal voice lessons at the age of sixteen. When he was drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1943, Fischer-Dieskau had just completed his secondary school studies and one semester at the Berlin Conservatory. He was captured in Italy in 1945 and spent two years as an American prisoner of war. ...show more

Albert Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau was born in Berlin to Albert, a principal, and Dora, a teacher. He started singing as a child and began formal voice lessons at the age of sixteen. When he was drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1943, Fischer-Dieskau had just completed his secondary school studies and one semester at the Berlin Conservatory. He was captured in Italy in 1945 and spent two years as an American prisoner of war.

During that time, he sang Lieder in prisoner-of-war camps to the homesick German soldiers. In 1947, he returned to Germany where he launched his professional career as a singer in Badenweiler when he sang in Brahms' German Requiem without any rehearsal--he was a last-minute substitute for a singer who was indisposed. He gave his first Lieder recital in Leipzig in the fall of 1947 and followed it soon afterwards with a highly successful first concert at Berlin's Titania-Palast. In the fall of 1948, Fischer-Dieskau was engaged as principal lyric baritone at the Berlin State Opera, making his debut as Posa in Verdi's Don Carlos under Ferenc Fricsay.

Subsequently, Fischer-Dieskau made guest appearances at the opera houses in Vienna and Munich. After 1949 he made concert tours in England, the Netherlands, Switzerland, France and Italy. In 1951, he made his Salzburg Festival concert debut with Mahler's Songs of a Wayfarer under Wilhelm Furtwängler. He made regular opera appearances at the Bayreuth Festival between 1954 and 1961 and at the Salzburg Festival from 1956 until the early 1970s. ...show less