Ks. Thomas Jesatko

Thomas Jesatko studied singing in his hometown of Nuremberg and in Munich. After engagements in Darmstadt and Osnabrück, he has been a member of the Nationaltheater Mannheim since 1997. The bass-baritone has sung almost all Mozart roles of his fach, as well as Pizarro, Kaspar, Escamillo, villains (»The Tales of Hoffmann«), Jochanaan, Orest, Barak, nearly all Wagnerian heroes including Wotan and Sachs, Falstaff, Moses in »Moses und Aron«, Pentheus (»The Bassarids« by Hans Werner Henze), Higgins, and many more. From 2007 to 2014, he appeared as Biterolf and Klingsor at the Bayreuth Festival, and has guested at numerous stages in Germany and abroad (Berlin, Dresden, Düsseldorf, Hanover, Basel, Zurich, Madrid, Copenhagen, Brussels, Charlotte NC, Santiago de Chile, among others). He also devotes himself with great passion to the performance of lieder and oratorio. In 2016, he was awarded the title »Kammersänger« by the state of Baden-Württemberg, and in 2017 he received the Wagner Stele from the Richard Wagner Association Mannheim. From 2023–25, he performed Klingsor in Jasmin Solfaghari’s production at the Goetheanum in Dornach, in 2025 he sang Kaspar in »Der Freischütz« in Antwerp and Ghent in a production by Christoph Marthaler, and in 2026 he will sing Pizarro in »Fidelio« in Heidelberg.