Christian Elsner

Tenor Christian Elsner has a large repertory that has shifted toward heldentenor roles. He also sings lieder and performs in concert works, and he is an important educator.
Elsner was born on August 11, 1965, in Freiburg, Germany, where he sang in the boys’ choir of the Freiburg Minster and took singing lessons from Richard Riffel. He studied at the Musikhochschule Frankfurt beginning in 1987, working with Richard Gründler, whom he regards as a mentor. He continued his studies with various teachers, among them Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and at the beginning of his career, he focused on lied and oratorio. Several awards, including second prizes at the Internationaler Walther Gruner-Wettbewerb in London in 1993, and the ARD International Music Competition in Munich the following year, helped his career along, and he began to take on operatic roles. At first, he sang lyric roles, such as Pedrillo in Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Staatstheater Darmstadt and Lenski in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, appearing at various German opera houses. Around 2007, Elsner began to move toward heldentenor (heroic tenor) roles, singing that of Siegmund in Wagner’s Die Walküre at several major houses, including the Semperoper in Dresden, and appearing as Parsifal in Wagner’s opera of the same name at the Wiener Staatsoper, the Deutsches Nationaltheater, and the Staatskapelle Weimar. His concert-stage credits include appearances at the Philharmonie in Berlin, Carnegie Hall in New York, and Suntory Hall in Tokyo. Working with various accompanists, including Burkhard Kehring, Hartmut Höll, and Gerold Huber, he has given lieder recitals at such venues as the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg, La Monnaie in Brussels, and the Beethovenfest in Bonn.
In addition to a long list of operatic credits, Elsner has released more than ten solo albums on CPO, Orfeo, PentaTone Classics, and other labels. These include a 2015 album of Schubert lieder orchestrations by Max Reger and Anton Weber with the Rundfunk Sinfonie-Orchester Berlin under conductor Marek Janowski. In 2021, with Janowski again as conductor, he appeared as Florestan in a new recording of Beethoven's Fidelio, opposite soprano Lise Davidsen as Leonore. Elsner is an important educator who began teaching at the Hochschule für Musik Würzburg in 2006 and then at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe in 2017. Among his other educational activities are three children’s books based, respectively, on Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Weber’s Der Freischütz, and Wagner’s Ring cycle. ~ James Manheim