Anton Dermota
This article needs additional citations for verification. (December 2019) |
Kammersänger Anton Dermota (June 4, 1910 – June 22, 1989) was a Slovene lyric tenor.
Early life
He was born in a poor family in the
Career
Dermota made his debut at the opera in Cluj in 1934, and was promptly invited by Bruno Walter to perform at the Vienna State Opera. Here he made his début as "First Man in Armor" in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's The Magic Flute in 1936 and got a contract immediately. His first leading role was Alfredo in Giuseppe Verdi's La traviata, which he sang in 1937. In the same year Dermota made his début at the Salzburg Festival in a production of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, conducted by Arturo Toscanini.
Dermota quickly became a favorite of the Viennese audience and remained with the State Opera's company for more than forty years. He was a witness (and helped to save parts of the furniture) when the opera house burned down after an Allied air raid on March 13, 1945. After the war he stayed with the company in its provisional lodgings at Theater an der Wien, and was one of the stars of the reopening of the original house in 1955 (as Florestan in Beethoven's Fidelio). As early as 1946 Dermota was honoured for his loyalty with the title of Kammersänger.
Anton Dermota sang as a tenor as Alfred in Die Fledermaus in the 1950 London Gramophone recording LLP 305.
For 20 years, Dermota sang at the Salzburg Festival almost every summer. As guest he gave acclaimed performances at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden London, in Palais Garnier and Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, at Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, in Australia, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.
Dermota was best known for his Mozart roles - especially his Don Ottavio in
An accomplished
To celebrate his 70th birthday, Dermota sang Tamino in The Magic Flute at the Vienna State Opera. A popular anecdote states that when he spoke the line "Ist's Phantasie, dass ich noch lebe?" ("Is it a fantasy that I am still alive?") the audience broke into spontaneous applause. A year later he sang the Shepherd in Carlos Kleiber's famous recording of Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, sounding astonishingly young.
Death
He died in Vienna less than a month after his 79th birthday.
Decorations and awards
- 1959: Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class[1]
- 1977: Grand Silver Medal for Services to the Republic of Austria[2]
References
- ^ "Reply to a parliamentary question" (pdf) (in German). p. 61. Retrieved 8 March 2013.
- ^ "Reply to a parliamentary question" (pdf) (in German). p. 468. Retrieved 8 March 2013.