Hermann Prey was a German lyric baritone

Baritone

Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...

. He is most famous for lieder and for light comic baritone roles in opera.

Biography

Hermann Prey was born in Berlin and grew up in Germany. He was scheduled to be drafted when World War II ended. He studied voice at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin and won the prize of the Frankfurt contest of the Hessischer Rundfunk in 1952.

He began to sing in song recitals and made his operatic debut the next year in Wiesbaden

Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden

The Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden is the State Theatre of the German state Hesse in the capital Wiesbaden, producing operas, plays, ballets, musicals and concerts on four stages. It is also known as Staatstheater Wiesbaden or Theater Wiesbaden...

. He joined the Staatsoper, where he sang until 1960. During his last years in Hamburg, he also made frequent guest appearances elsewhere, including the Salzburg Festival

Salzburg Festival

The Salzburg Festival is a prominent festival of music and drama established in 1920. It is held each summer within the Austrian town of Salzburg, the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart...

.

He sang frequently at the 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...

 between 1960 and 1970 and made his 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...

 debut in 1965. Although he often sang 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...

 early in his career, he later concentrated more on Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

 and Richard Strauss

Richard Strauss

Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...

. Prey was well known for playing Figaro (Mozart and Rossini), but he played other Mozart roles at least equally often, particularly Papageno

The Magic Flute

The Magic Flute is an opera in two acts composed in 1791 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a Singspiel, a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue....

 and Guglielmo

Così fan tutte

Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti K. 588, is an opera buffa by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart first performed in 1790. The libretto was written by Lorenzo Da Ponte....

. He also played, and recorded, the Count in The Marriage of Figaro

The Marriage of Figaro

Le nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata , K. 492, is an opera buffa composed in 1786 in four acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, based on a stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro .Although the play by...

. He is regarded by many as the best Eisenstein

Die Fledermaus

Die Fledermaus is an operetta composed by Johann Strauss II to a German libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genée.- Literary sources :...

 in Die Fledermaus

Die Fledermaus

Die Fledermaus is an operetta composed by Johann Strauss II to a German libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genée.- Literary sources :...

 operetta.

He was at home with comic opera Italian-style, displaying scenic intelligence, liveliness and hilarity. His virtuoso agility and great comic acting made him an obvious choice for numerous productions of Mozart's and Rossini's operas in the 1970s. In 1972 he performed as Figaro in Jean-Pierre Ponnelle

Jean-Pierre Ponnelle

Jean-Pierre Ponnelle was a noted French opera director.-Biography:Ponnelle was born in Paris. He studied philosophy, art, and history there and, in 1952, began his career in Germany as a theatre designer for Hans Werner Henze's opera Boulevard Solitude...

's television film of Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia with Teresa Berganza

Teresa Berganza

Teresa Berganza, born on March 16, 1935), is a Spanish mezzo-soprano. She is most closely associated with the roles of Rossini, Mozart, and Bizet. She is admired for her technical virtuosity, musical intelligence and beguiling stage presence.- Biography :...

 as Rosina, Luigi Alva

Luigi Alva

Luis Ernesto Alva y Talledo, better known as Luigi Alva is a Peruvian operatic tenor, active in the third quarter of the 20th century. He was admired for his purity of tone, the elegance of his phrasing and the clarity of his diction...

 as Almaviva and conductor Claudio Abbado

Claudio Abbado

Claudio Abbado, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI , is an Italian conductor. He has served as music director of the La Scala opera house in Milan, principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, music director of the Vienna State Opera,...

. He appeared alongside Fritz Wunderlich

Fritz Wunderlich

Friedrich "Fritz" Karl Otto Wunderlich was a German lyric tenor, famed for his singing of the Mozart repertory and Italian and German opera and lieder. He died in an accident when he was only 35...

 in the live televised version of Il Barbiere di Siviglia in its German translation, Der Barbier von Sevilla. He also portrayed Figaro in 1976 in Ponnelle's film of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro.

Prey also sang operetta and performed on German television, becoming extremely popular with television audiences. He shared media-celebrity with Fritz Wunderlich until the latter's untimely death, often playing Papageno to Wunderlich's Tamino.

He is best remembered for his recitals, his first American recital having been given in 1956. He was a gifted interpreter 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...

, as well as other Lieder (together with the German pianist Sebastian Peschko

Sebastian Peschko

Sebastian Peschko was a German classical pianist specialised in the art form of lieder and as such was partner to some of the foremost lyrical singers of the 20th century....

). He also appeared frequently in concert, particularly in the Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...

 Passions and Brahms

Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene...

' A German Requiem

Ein deutsches Requiem

A German Requiem, To Words of the Holy Scriptures, Op. 45 by Johannes Brahms, is a large-scale work for chorus, orchestra, and a soprano and a baritone soloist, composed between 1865 and 1868. It comprises seven movements, which together last 65 to 80 minutes, making this work Brahms's longest...

. A videotaped performance of Schubert's lieder-cycle Schwanengesang

Schwanengesang

Schwanengesang is the title of a posthumous collection of songs by Franz Schubert.Unlike the earlier Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, it uses poems by three poets, Ludwig Rellstab , Heinrich Heine and Johann Gabriel Seidl . Schwanengesang has the number D 957 in the Deutsch catalogue...

is available.

Prey possessed a clear, polished tone - darker and deeper-sounding than his slightly older contemporary 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"...

, but equally refined and equally capable of soaring into the tenor range without the smallest suggestion of vocal effort.

He recorded a multi-volume set for Phillips, tracing the history of the Lied from the Minnesänger to the twentieth century. In addition, he released numerous recordings of opera and song.

Unlike Fischer-Dieskau, Prey wisely limited his Wagner to the soft, high-baritone roles Wolfram

Tannhäuser (opera)

Tannhäuser is an opera in three acts, music and text by Richard Wagner, based on the two German legends of Tannhäuser and the song contest at Wartburg...

 and Beckmesser

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 can be seen on video in the latter role, opposite Bernd Weikl

Bernd Weikl

Bernd Weikl is an Austrian operatic baritone, best known for his performances in the operas of Richard Wagner.- Early career :...

.

Starting in 1982, he taught at the Musikhochschule Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

, and he wrote an autobiography which was translated as First Night Fever (ISBN 0-7145-3998-8).

In 1988, he directed a production of The Marriage of Figaro in Salzburg. His son Florian is also a baritone.

He died in Krailling, Bavaria

Starnberg (district)

Starnberg is a Kreis in the southern part of Bavaria, Germany. Neighboring districts are Fürstenfeldbruck, Munich, Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen, Weilheim-Schongau and Landsberg....

.

For many years, Michael Endres

Michael Endres

Michael Endres is a German pianist.He was professor for piano from 1993 to 2004 at the Hochschule fuer Musik in Cologne, until 2009 at the Hochschule Hanns Eisler in Berlin—and since autumn 2009 has been professor for piano at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.-Early...

was the pianist to Hermann Prey.

External Links

• Interview with Hermann Prey by Bruce Duffie, October 12, 1985