Hans Hotter
Encyclopedia
Hans Hotter was a German opera
tic bass-baritone
, admired internationally after World War II for the power, beauty, and intelligence of his singing, especially in Wagner
operas. He was extremely tall and his appearance was striking because of his high, narrow face, wide mouth, and big, aquiline nose. His voice and diction were equally recognisable.
, Hotter studied with Matthäus Roemer in Munich
. He worked as an organist and choirmaster before making his operatic debut in Opava
in 1930.
He performed in Germany and Austria under the Nazi regime, but, while he made some appearances outside the country, including concerts under the baton of Bruno Walter in Amsterdam. He was unable to pursue an international career until his Covent Garden
debut in 1947. After that, he sang in all the major opera houses of Europe. He made his Metropolitan Opera
debut as the title role in The Flying Dutchman
in 1950. In four seasons at the Met, he performed 35 times in 13 roles, almost all Wagnerian.
Probably Hotter's best known vocal achievement was his Wotan in Der Ring des Nibelungen
, beginning with the Rheingold Wotan and Siegfried Wanderer ), which he first sang in the German provinces in his early 20's, and adding the Walkure shortly thereafter at the German theatre in Prague; he owned the roles until the mid-1960s, by which time his voice underwent a brief crisis owing to a severe asthma condition. This crisis caused him to miss the first season of the post-war Bayreuth Festival in 1951, but he joined the company for several years starting in the 1952 season.
His interpretation of Wotan in the operas Die Walküre and Siegfried was documented as part of Decca's famous Ring Cycle in the early 1960s, with conductor Georg Solti
and record producer John Culshaw
officiating. In addition, his interpretation of the role of Wotan was captured on live recordings from the Bayreuth Festival
conducted by Clemens Krauss
and Joseph Keilberth
in the mid-1950s, and a 1930s studio recording of Act II of Die Walkure captures him at the beginning of his association with the role. He also directed a complete Ring at Covent Garden from 1961 to 1964. His magnificent portrayal of Gurnemanz in Parsifal
was preserved on record in Hans Knappertsbusch
's second live recording at Bayreuth
. While still singing these roles in Bayreuth, he also assumed the smaller role of Titurel in the same opera as part of the Bayreuth polidy of switching off the most prominent artists from demanding principal roles to significant supporting parts, thus vouchsafing them the same fee for much less work, while placing optimum vocal and dramatic artistry on the stage. The two recordings of Titurel were made long before his definitive recording of Gurnemanz made at the 1961 Festival.
A much-admired Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
, he nevertheless preferred to sing the smaller and lower-pitched role of Pogner later in his career, because its tessitura was better suited to his voice. Similarly, he sang in Parsifal
first as the baritone Amfortas when he was younger and switched to the bass Gurnemanz in later years. He was also celebrated for his Pizarro in Beethoven
's Fidelio
, of which a live 1960s recording from Covent Garden was issued for the first time in 2005on the Testament label.
Although his international fame was almost entirely in the German repertoire, in Germany and Austria he was also known for performing Verdi
in the vernacular and was, for example a popular Falstaff
and a formidable Grand Inquisitor in Don Carlos
, a role he performed in the original Italian in several theatres as well, including a breathtaking performance of it at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He performed, and recorded, several non-German opera roles in German translation, including "Graf Almaviva" (Mozart), Boris Godunov, and Don Basilio (Rossini).
As a lieder
singer he had few peers. Among German male singers of the 1950s and 1960s, only Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
commanded such widespread admiration and affection. Hotter, like his younger colleague, brought a true feeling for words as well as music to the songs of Schubert
, Schumann
, and others.
A passionate anti-Nazi, Hotter used to make fun of Hitler at parties and adamantly refused to take part in the Bayreuth Festival during the Third Reich because of the Festival's association with Hitler and his politics. According to Hotter's obituary in The Times
, Hitler kept Hotter's records in his private collection. When Hotter was interrogated about this at a post-war denazification hearing , he answered that the Pope had some of them too.
Hotter never completely retired from the stage, making his final public appearance in his nineties after several seasons singing such significant character roles as Schigolch in Alban Berg
's twelve-tone opera Lulu
. He was a notable narrator in Schoenberg
's Gurre-Lieder
, a role he continued to take well into his eighties.
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
tic bass-baritone
Bass-baritone
A bass-baritone is a high-lying bass or low-lying "classical" baritone voice type which shares certain qualities with the true baritone voice. The term arose in the late 19th century to describe the particular type of voice required to sing three Wagnerian roles: the Dutchman in Der fliegende...
, admired internationally after World War II for the power, beauty, and intelligence of his singing, especially in Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
operas. He was extremely tall and his appearance was striking because of his high, narrow face, wide mouth, and big, aquiline nose. His voice and diction were equally recognisable.
Biography
Born in Offenbach am Main, HesseHesse
Hesse or Hessia is both a cultural region of Germany and the name of an individual German state.* The cultural region of Hesse includes both the State of Hesse and the area known as Rhenish Hesse in the neighbouring Rhineland-Palatinate state...
, Hotter studied with Matthäus Roemer in Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
. He worked as an organist and choirmaster before making his operatic debut in Opava
Opava
Opava is a city in the northern Czech Republic on the river Opava, located to the north-west of Ostrava. The historical capital of Czech Silesia, Opava is now in the Moravian-Silesian Region and has a population of 59,843 as of January 1, 2005....
in 1930.
He performed in Germany and Austria under the Nazi regime, but, while he made some appearances outside the country, including concerts under the baton of Bruno Walter in Amsterdam. He was unable to pursue an international career until his Covent Garden
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
debut in 1947. After that, he sang in all the major opera houses of Europe. He made his Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
debut as the title role in The Flying Dutchman
The Flying Dutchman (opera)
Der fliegende Holländer is an opera, with music and libretto by Richard Wagner.Wagner claimed in his 1870 autobiography Mein Leben that he had been inspired to write "The Flying Dutchman" following a stormy sea crossing he made from Riga to London in July and August 1839, but in his 1843...
in 1950. In four seasons at the Met, he performed 35 times in 13 roles, almost all Wagnerian.
Probably Hotter's best known vocal achievement was his Wotan in Der Ring des Nibelungen
Der Ring des Nibelungen
Der Ring des Nibelungen is a cycle of four epic operas by the German composer Richard Wagner . The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied...
, beginning with the Rheingold Wotan and Siegfried Wanderer ), which he first sang in the German provinces in his early 20's, and adding the Walkure shortly thereafter at the German theatre in Prague; he owned the roles until the mid-1960s, by which time his voice underwent a brief crisis owing to a severe asthma condition. This crisis caused him to miss the first season of the post-war Bayreuth Festival in 1951, but he joined the company for several years starting in the 1952 season.
His interpretation of Wotan in the operas Die Walküre and Siegfried was documented as part of Decca's famous Ring Cycle in the early 1960s, with conductor Georg Solti
Georg Solti
Sir Georg Solti, KBE, was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor. He was a major classical recording artist, holding the record for having received the most Grammy Awards, having personally won 31 as a conductor, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition to his...
and record producer John Culshaw
John Culshaw
John Royds Culshaw OBE was a pioneering English classical record producer for Decca Records. He recorded a wide range of music, but is best known for masterminding the first studio recording of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, begun in 1958.Largely self-educated musically, Culshaw worked for...
officiating. In addition, his interpretation of the role of Wotan was captured on live recordings from the Bayreuth Festival
Bayreuth Festival
The Bayreuth Festival is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th century German composer Richard Wagner are presented...
conducted by Clemens Krauss
Clemens Krauss
Clemens Heinrich Krauss was an Austrian conductor and opera impresario, particularly associated with the music of Richard Strauss.-Biography:...
and Joseph Keilberth
Joseph Keilberth
Joseph Keilberth was a German conductor who specialized in opera.He started his career in the State Theatre of his native city, Karlsruhe. In 1940 he became director of the German Philharmonic Orchestra of Prague. Near the end of World War II he became principal conductor of the Dresden...
in the mid-1950s, and a 1930s studio recording of Act II of Die Walkure captures him at the beginning of his association with the role. He also directed a complete Ring at Covent Garden from 1961 to 1964. His magnificent portrayal of Gurnemanz in Parsifal
Parsifal
Parsifal is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. It is loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the 13th century epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival and his quest for the Holy Grail, and on Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail.Wagner first conceived the work...
was preserved on record in Hans Knappertsbusch
Hans Knappertsbusch
Hans Knappertsbusch was a German conductor, best known for his performances of the music of Richard Wagner, Anton Bruckner and Richard Strauss....
's second live recording at Bayreuth
Bayreuth Festspielhaus
The or Bayreuth Festival Theatre is an opera house north of Bayreuth, Germany, dedicated solely to the performance of operas by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner...
. While still singing these roles in Bayreuth, he also assumed the smaller role of Titurel in the same opera as part of the Bayreuth polidy of switching off the most prominent artists from demanding principal roles to significant supporting parts, thus vouchsafing them the same fee for much less work, while placing optimum vocal and dramatic artistry on the stage. The two recordings of Titurel were made long before his definitive recording of Gurnemanz made at the 1961 Festival.
A much-admired Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is an opera in three acts, written and composed by Richard Wagner. It is among the longest operas still commonly performed today, usually taking around four and a half hours. It was first performed at the Königliches Hof- und National-Theater in Munich, on June 21,...
, he nevertheless preferred to sing the smaller and lower-pitched role of Pogner later in his career, because its tessitura was better suited to his voice. Similarly, he sang in Parsifal
Parsifal
Parsifal is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. It is loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the 13th century epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival and his quest for the Holy Grail, and on Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail.Wagner first conceived the work...
first as the baritone Amfortas when he was younger and switched to the bass Gurnemanz in later years. He was also celebrated for his Pizarro in Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
's Fidelio
Fidelio
Fidelio is a German opera in two acts by Ludwig van Beethoven. It is Beethoven's only opera. The German libretto is by Joseph Sonnleithner from the French of Jean-Nicolas Bouilly which had been used for the 1798 opera Léonore, ou L’amour conjugal by Pierre Gaveaux, and for the 1804 opera Leonora...
, of which a live 1960s recording from Covent Garden was issued for the first time in 2005on the Testament label.
Although his international fame was almost entirely in the German repertoire, in Germany and Austria he was also known for performing Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
in the vernacular and was, for example a popular Falstaff
Falstaff (opera)
Falstaff is an operatic commedia lirica in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, adapted by Arrigo Boito from Shakespeare's plays The Merry Wives of Windsor and scenes from Henry IV. It was Verdi's last opera, written in the composer's ninth decade, and only the second of his 26 operas to be a comedy...
and a formidable Grand Inquisitor in Don Carlos
Don Carlos
Don Carlos is a five-act grand opera composed by Giuseppe Verdi to a French language libretto by Camille du Locle and Joseph Méry, based on the dramatic play Don Carlos, Infant von Spanien by Friedrich Schiller...
, a role he performed in the original Italian in several theatres as well, including a breathtaking performance of it at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He performed, and recorded, several non-German opera roles in German translation, including "Graf Almaviva" (Mozart), Boris Godunov, and Don Basilio (Rossini).
As a lieder
Liede
The Liede is a little river that used to connect Haarlem Lake with the Spaarne, just south of Spaarndam, at a small lake called the Mooie Nel....
singer he had few peers. Among German male singers of the 1950s and 1960s, only Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau is a retired German lyric baritone and conductor of classical music, one of the most famous lieder performers of the post-war period and "one of the supreme vocal artists of the 20th century"...
commanded such widespread admiration and affection. Hotter, like his younger colleague, brought a true feeling for words as well as music to the songs of Schubert
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
, Schumann
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
, and others.
A passionate anti-Nazi, Hotter used to make fun of Hitler at parties and adamantly refused to take part in the Bayreuth Festival during the Third Reich because of the Festival's association with Hitler and his politics. According to Hotter's obituary in The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, Hitler kept Hotter's records in his private collection. When Hotter was interrogated about this at a post-war denazification hearing , he answered that the Pope had some of them too.
Hotter never completely retired from the stage, making his final public appearance in his nineties after several seasons singing such significant character roles as Schigolch in Alban Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...
's twelve-tone opera Lulu
Lulu (opera)
Lulu is an opera by the composer Alban Berg. The libretto was adapted by Berg himself from Frank Wedekind's plays Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora .-Composition history:...
. He was a notable narrator in Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
's Gurre-Lieder
Gurre-Lieder
Gurre-Lieder is a massive cantata for five vocal soloists, narrator, chorus and large orchestra, composed by Arnold Schoenberg, on poems by the Danish novelist Jens Peter Jacobsen...
, a role he continued to take well into his eighties.
Sources
- Hotter, H. Hans Hotter: Memoirs (Edited and translated by Donald Arthur, with forewords by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Zubin Mehta), UPNE, 2006. ISBN 1555536611.
- The TimesThe TimesThe Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, "Obituary: Hans Hotter", 13 December 2003 - Turing, Penelope, "Hans Hotter: Great German bass baritone famed for his Wagnerian roles", The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, 13 December 2003.
External links
- Bach-Cantatas.com biography
- Discography (Capon's Lists of Opera Recordings)
- Audio samples - Der fliegende Holländer (Daland: Kurt BöhmeKurt BöhmeKurt Böhme was a German bass.He was born in Dresden, Germany, where he studied with Adolf Kluge at the Dresden Conservatory. He made his debut in 1930 in Bautzen as Kaspar, one of his most important roles further on...
, Senta: Helene Werth, Erik: Bernd AldenhoffBernd AldenhoffBernd Aldenhoff was a German Heldentenor.He was born in 1908 in Duisburg and was raised in an orphanage in the Rhineland....
, Mary: Res Fischer, Steuermann: Helmut KrebsHelmut KrebsHelmut Krebs was a distinguished German tenor in opera and concert, who sang a wide range of roles from Baroque to contemporary works.-Professional career:...
, Holländer: Hans Hotter - Chor und Sinfonieorchester des Norddeutschen Rundfunks - Wilhelm SchüchterWilhelm SchüchterWilhelm Schüchter was a German conductor. He was Generalmusikdirektor in Dortmund and left a legacy of opera recordings.-Professional career:...
- Hamburg 1951)- http://www.myoperatoday.com/music/wagner/dutchman/Act_I.mp3 Richard Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer - 1. act
- http://www.myoperatoday.com/music/wagner/dutchman/Act_II.mp3 Richard Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer - 2. act
- http://www.myoperatoday.com/music/wagner/dutchman/Act_III.mp3 Richard Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer - 3. act
- Video sample: Hans Hotter as Jokanaan in Salome