Adolf Brakl

Adolf Brakl ( August 8, 1856 in Tyrnau , Hungary - November 25, 1930 in Munich ) was an Austrian theater actor , director , comedian and opera singer ( tenor / baritone ).

Life

Brakl, the son of a small businessman, was destined to be a merchant by his parents and entered a Viennese wholesale business as an apprentice, but left the same in 1872 and, after having attended the Niklasche Theater School earlier, got an engagement at the Theater an der Josefstadt in 1873 under director Johann Fürst (inaugural role "Horcher" in the white cat ).

After a short activity there, he came to Rohitsch-Sauerbrunn , where he made his debut as "Hansl" in A Word to the Minister . Soon afterwards he was engaged at several larger and smaller Austrian and German provincial theaters as a comedian, youthful hero and lover, father player, nature boy etc., most recently as a singing comedian in Salzburg.

There Franz von Jauner became aware of the tenor voice in the operetta Juanita , in which Brakl played "Evangelista", and immediately engaged him for the Ringtheater. Even in his debut role as “Muckl” in the Herrgottschnitzer , his voice fell in general with the G'stanzln he had to sing, and as “Nathaniel” in Hoffmann's stories , Eduard Hanslick referred directly to his voice, so that Jauner found himself motivated to assign the young singer the role of the title hero in this operetta. The next day the theater burned down and Brakl became the first operetta tenor to join the Gärtnerplatztheater in Munich (inaugural role "Januario" in Seekadet ), where he was widely applauded from 1881 to 1885, but in the last year he was called to the Karltheater in Vienna performed.

There he appeared as "Don Caesar", his well-known brilliant role. It was a long time since an operetta part had caused such a stir as this one. The composer himself described the artist as one of the most outstanding interpreters of this role, with which Brakl's name remained associated from then on.

In 1888, differences with the management and the artistic decline of the institute prompted him to terminate his contract prematurely and accept a three-year engagement at the Frankfurt City Theater (inaugural roles: “Farinelli”, “Ermino” in Gasparone and “Caesar”).

Hardly had the same thing happened when it was his longing for Vienna that led him to a guest performance of sixty evenings at the Karltheater (December 1891 to February 1892).

Since that time he has renounced a permanent engagement and appeared only as a guest on the first stages in Germany. In 1896, on the occasion of a guest performance in Berlin, he was induced to take over the direction of the Central Theater , where he made his début as “Beaumarchais” in the operetta Figaro at Hof .

Later he took over the management of the city theaters in Bern, Kolmar, Ulm, etc. However, since the provincial conditions as director could not satisfy him, he resumed his guest tours.

He died in Munich in 1930.

He was married to the actress Elvira Schweida , his brothers Franz Josef Brakl and CM Brakl were also actors.

literature

• Ludwig Eisenberg : Large biographical lexicon of the German stage in the XIX. Century . Verlag von Paul List , Leipzig 1903, pp. 118 f., ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).

Web links

• Adolf Brakl in the Bavarian Musicians' Lexicon Online (BMLO)
• Adolf Brakl at Operissimo  on the basis of the Great Singer Lexicon

This article is based on a public domain text from Ludwig Eisenberg's Large Biographical Lexicon of the German Stage in the 19th Century , 1903 edition.

Please only remove this note if you have revised the article to such an extent that the text reflects the current state of knowledge on this topic, this has been proven and it meets today's linguistic requirements.