Austrian baritone Thomas Essl has been a member of the ensemble at the Chemnitz Opera House since the 2023–24 season, having made his debut there in 2022–23 as a guest artist in roles such as Escamillo, Peter Besenbinder, and Wozzek. Most recently, he has appeared in roles including the Four Villains in The Tales of Hoffmann, Marcello in La bohème, and Giorgio Germont in La traviata. In 2025/26, he will sing the lead role in the world premiere of the opera Rummelplatz by Ludger Vollmer and Jenny Erpenbeck, the title role in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and Tonio in Bajazzo.
During the 2021–2022 season, he appeared at the Graz Opera as Halit in the world premiere of Sinan Sanamli’s opera The Patron Saint of Liars and as Lazar Wolf in Jerry Bock’s musical Anatevka; at the Leoben City Theater as Eisenstein in Johann Strauss’s The Bat; at the Lied Festival in Würzburg with Schubert’s Schwanengesang, and at the Austrian opera festival Oper Burg Gars as Dancairo in Bizet’s Carmen. Additional engagements include gala concerts in Riga, Johannes Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem in Graz, the role of Krušina in Smetana’s The Bartered Bride at the Graz Opera, and Schumann’s Dichterliebe again at the Lied Festival in Würzburg.
In previous years, he was a prize winner at the Zukunftsstimmen competition organized by Elīna Garanča; he sang the roles of Guglielmo in Così fan tutte, the Count Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro, Scherasmin in Carl Maria von Weber’s Oberon under Oksana Lyniv, the Innkeeper in Engelbert Humperdinck’s Königskinder, Frank in The Bat at the Graz Opera, Don Giovanni at the Ring Award at the Schauspielhaus Graz, and Count Hanschmann in Lehár’s Die blaue Mazur at the Stadttheater Baden.
In 2018, Thomas Essl was a prize winner at the Nico-Dostal Operetta Competition and the Accademia vocalis in Wörgl.
He made a guest appearance as Malatesta (Don Pasquale) at Opera Nova in Sofia, Bulgaria. He also performs regularly and with great success on the concert stage as a lieder singer and in masses and oratorios by Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Brahms, Carl Orff, and others.
Born in Leoben and raised in Trofaiach, Thomas Essl studied trumpet and jazz piano in Graz. He received his vocal training in Graz with Susanne Kopeinig and at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna with Karlheinz Hanser. He attended master classes with Brigitte Fassbaender, Thomas Hampson, Christa Ludwig, Thomas Quasthoff, and Krassimira Stoyanova, as well as acting lessons with Chris Pichler.
03/2026
