Thank God Frick

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Thank God Frick

Gottlob Frick (born July 28, 1906 in Ölbronn ; † August 18, 1994 in Mühlacker ) was a German opera singer with a bass voice .

Life

Gottlob Frick grew up as the youngest of 13 children in a forester's house. His extraordinary bass voice was noticed early on, and he sang in the ensemble of the Stuttgart State Opera since 1927 . Frick made his first appearance as a soloist in 1934 in the role of Daland ( The Flying Dutchman ) at the Landestheater Coburg .

After engagements in Freiburg and Königsberg , he was discovered by Karl Böhm in 1939 and engaged at the Dresden State Opera , where he immediately achieved outstanding success as King Heinrich in Lohengrin . Frick stayed in Dresden until 1950 and sang all the important bass roles there: Osmin ( Entführung ), Sarastro ( Magic Flute ), Rocco ( Fidelio ) - his favorite role -, Philipp II ( Don Carlos ), Eremit ( Freischütz ) and the bass parts in the operas Richard Wagner's .

From 1950 to 1953 Frick sang at the Städtische Oper Berlin , from 1957 to 1967 as a guest at the Covent Garden Opera in London (1961/1962) and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. From 1960 to 1964 he appeared at the Bayreuth Festival as Pogner in the Meistersingers , Hunding in the Walküre , Hagen in the Götterdämmerung and as Fasolt in the Rheingold . From 1953 Frick was a permanent guest in the ensemble of the Vienna and Bavarian State Operas . In Vienna alone he sang around 500 performances. Frick also had significant success as an oratorio singer and was considered the most typical German bass in his time.

He had a close friendship with the tenor Fritz Wunderlich , who was 24 years his junior . He was also able to win Wunderlich for his hobby, hunting.

However, Frick never wanted to sing Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau in Richard Strauss ' Rosenkavalier because he did not feel the Viennese in himself.

Frick could be heard at major opera houses until the 1970s. The "man with the black bass voice" embodied Pimen ( Boris Godunow ) at the Stuttgart State Opera in 1977 at the age of seventy . It was the last appearance of his stage career. This was followed by TV shows like Music is Trumps or Do You Know the Melody? , In which he as van Bett ( Tsar and Carpenter ) or as Baculus ( The Poacher ) occurred. Gottlob Frick had his last public appearance on January 26, 1985 as part of a concert in the Schießhaus in Heilbronn , in which he played the aria from the Magic Flute and some songs by Robert Stolz ( Wohin ist das alles, where? And Auf der Heide bloom the last roses ) sang. Frick also loved performing folk songs and popular music. An example of this is the recording of Franz Abt's forest devotion with Frick.

Gottlob Frick died at the age of 88 and was buried in the cemetery of his home community in Ölbronn-Dürrn in the Enz district .

Appreciations

The large hall of the Mühlacker Kulturzentrum Mühlehof was renamed the Gottlob-Frick-Saal in his honor in 2007 . A square was dedicated to him in Heilbronn and named Gottlob-Frick-Platz. The Gottlob-Frick Society, founded in 1995, maintains a memorial in the town hall in Ölbronn-Dürrn . The Enz was in 2008 in a competition at the College of Design in Pforzheim a Gottlob Frick medal design, make and shape. This award is given for significant life achievements in the cultural - especially musical - field.

theatre

Honors

literature

  • Klaus Günther: The singer prince. Thank God Frick and his time . Stieglitz-Verlag, Mühlacker 2007, ISBN 978-3-7987-0391-9 .
  • Jürgen Kesting: The great singers of our century . Econ, Düsseldorf et al. 1993, ISBN 3-430-15389-1 .
  • Klaus Ulrich Spiegel: A singer prince on song journeys - Gottlob Frick in song recordings 1949-1970 Hamburg archive 2013

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ knerger.de: The grave of Gottlob Frick
personal data
SURNAME Frick, thank God
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German opera singer (bass)
DATE OF BIRTH July 28, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Ölbronn
DATE OF DEATH August 18, 1994
Place of death Mühlacker