Gottlob Frick

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dark-haired, clean-shaven white man in middle age in suit, collar and tie
Frick in about 1960

Gottlob Frick (28 July 1906 – 18 August 1994) was a German operatic

Parsifal or comic figures such as Osmin in Die Entführung aus dem Serail or Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor
. He sang at the leading European opera houses in the 1950s and 1960s and recorded all his major roles.

Life and career

Frick was born in Ölbronn, Württemberg on 28 July 1906, the youngest of thirteen children of a Swabian head forester and gamekeeper.[1][2] In the mid-1920s he attended the Stuttgart Conservatory, studying under Fritz Windgassen (father of Frick’s contemporary, the tenor Wolfgang Windgassen).[2] From 1927 he sang in the chorus of Stuttgart Opera and in 1930 he auditioned for Siegfried Wagner, director of the Bayreuth Festival, who engaged him for small parts.[1][3]

Frick's first major solo role was at the

Verdi, including the latter's Don Carlos in which King Philip was Frick's favourite operatic role. Then, as in most of his career, he usually sang in German.[1]

In 1950 Frick moved to the

According to The Times, Frick, who had "one of those saturnine, dark voices that seem peculiar to the German-speaking countries", had:

... a range of two octaves, from the low D of Mozart's Osmin up to a high G in the baritone register. It was a flexible, immediately recognisable instrument which its owner used with the utmost intelligence, as can be heard on his many discs.[1]

In his A to Z of Singers, David Patmore quotes the conductor

Parsifal or comic figures such as Osmin in Die Entführung aus dem Serail or Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor.[1][2] Steane wrote of him, "There is no forcing in his singing, and it is all firm as a rock. Whether benevolently enthusiastic as the Landgrave, or soft and intimate in Pogner's music with Eva, or voicing the dark menace of Hagen, he is king of his kind".[7]

Frick died in Pforzheim in Baden-Württemberg on 18 August 1994, aged 88.[1]

Recordings

According to Patmore, Frick's recorded legacy, of both commercial and live recordings, is substantial and does him full justice.

Sir Thomas Beecham and again for Josef Krips, Sarastro for Otto Klemperer and Rocco (in Fidelio) for Klemperer and Ferenc Fricsay. He also recorded the Hermit (in Weber's Der Freischütz) for Joseph Keilberth and Kaspar for Lovro von Matačić, The Peasant (in Carl Orff's Die Kluge) for both Wolfgang Sawallisch and Kurt Eichhorn, Kecal (in The Bartered Bride), The Commendatore for Giulini, Pogner and King Henry for Rudolf Kempe, King Marke, Daland and the Landgrave for Franz Konwitschny, and Hunding, Hagen and Gurnemanz for Georg Solti. When planning the first studio recording of Götterdämmerung, made in 1964, the producer John Culshaw considered Frick one of the three indispensable cast members: "Nilsson, Windgassen and Gottlob Frick (Hagen) had to be in the cast or there was no point in starting".[8] In Steane's view, it is for this recording that Frick will be best remembered – "the embodiment of evil".[6]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g "Obituary: Gottlob Frick", The Times, 14 September 1994, p. 17
  2. ^ a b c Forbes, Elizabeth. "Gottlob Frick", The Independent, 10 October 1994, p. 14
  3. ^ a b c d Patmore, David. "Gottlob Frick", from A to Z of Singers, Naxos Music Library.
  4. ^ a b c d Rosenthal, Harold, and Alan Blyth. "Gottlob Frick", Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press, 2001. (subscription required)
  5. ^ "Gottlob Frick", MetOpera Database. Retrieved 11 March 2024
  6. ^ a b Steane, John. "Gottlob Frick", The Guardian, 4 October 1994, p. 17
  7. ^ Steane, p. 331
  8. ^ Culshaw, pp. 181−182

Sources

  • .
  • Patmore, David (2015). A to Z of Singers. Hong Kong: Naxos. .
  • .

External links