Wolfgang Brendel
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Wolfgang Brendel (born 20 October 1947, in Munich) is a German opera singer (baritone), and a professor of voice at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. He has performed throughout Europe, Asia, and North America.
Biography
Wolfgang Brendel grew up in Wiesbaden, where he took singing lessons with Rolff Sartorius during his time at the conservatory. In 1971, he debuted at the Pfalztheater in Kaiserslautern as Guglielmo in Così fan tutte. His artistic home for the greater part of his career was the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, where in 1977 he became the youngest Kammersänger in the company's history.
In some sense taking up the mantle of
Brendel began his
Brendel has performed on all the major opera stages in Germany (
Brendel, for many years a professor of voice at the Munich Hochschule für Musik und Theater, as of fall, 2011, is Professor of Practice at the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. In 1997 he was awarded the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. His most recent appearances have been as Scarpia, Mandryka, Sachs, Eisenstein, and Holländer.
Recordings
While most of the studio recordings Brendel made are not currently available (e.g., I pagliacci, a German-language La bohème), a few are: Die Fledermaus (Previn, 1999), in which he is the Eisenstein, Schumann's
A good number of his live performances are documented on DVD and CD. He can be seen as the High Priest in Samson et Dalila (San Francisco, 1981), Papageno (Munich, 1983), Eugene Onegin (Chicago, 1985), Dr. Falke (Munich, 1987), Wolfram (Bayreuth, 1989), Sachs (Deutsche Oper Berlin, 1995), Mandryka (MET, 1995), and the Music Master in "Ariadne auf Naxos" (MET, 2003); there are also DVDs of his Posa (Barcelona, 1985) and Germont (Madrid, 1990) in limited circulation.
He was featured in made-for-televisions films of two J. Strauss operettas: Eine Nacht in Venedig (1975) and Der Zigeunerbaron (1976). CDs in circulation of complete live performances – some quite rare – include: his Germont under Kleiber from at least two different Munich performances (1975 and 1977), a youthful Wolfram (Perugia, 1972) and Guglielmo (Munich, 1978), both under Sawallisch, Posa (Munich, 1977; San Francisco, 1979; Munich, 1983), Count Almaviva (Munich, 1983), Onegin (Vienna, 1988), Enrico (London, 1988), Amfortas (Milan, 1991; New York, 1995), di Luna (Munich, 1992), and Mandryka (Munich, 2001). A CD exists of a Deutsches Requiem with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Kubelik (1978).
References
Some of the information in this article comes from the German-language Wikipedia article.
- 'Wolfgang Brendel', The Concise Grove Dictionary of Music, 1994 Oxford University Press.
- Louise T. Guinther, 'Head, Body, and Heart: The keys to Wolfgang Brendel's artistry' (cover story), Opera News, January 1998.
- Faculty page, Hochschule für Musik und Theater München
- Sabine Tomzig, [1]. 3 August 1973. Retrieved 22 December 2008.
- Paul Griffiths, "The Met's Magical Frau ohne Schatten", December 2001. Retrieved 21 December 2008.
- MetOpera Database. Searched 21 December 2008.