Berthold Possemeyer

Berthold Klemens Possemeyer (born May 20, 1951 in Gladbeck ) is a German opera and concert singer (baritone) and university teacher .

Life

Berthold Possemeyer was born the son of a master baker in Gladbeck. From 1961 to 1967 he was a student at the St. Ludwig Franciscan College in Vlodrop / Netherlands. After graduating from high school in 1969 at the old-language boys' grammar school in Bottrop, today's Heinrich-Heine grammar school, and after 18 months of compulsory military service, he studied school music for teaching at grammar schools (state examination) and church music (A-examination), conducting and musicology, as well as at the Cologne University of Music Singing with Franz Müller-Heuser and Josef Metternich . He won prizes at the singing competitions in Berlin , 's-Hertogenbosch , the Leipzig International Bach Competition and the Würzburg Mozart Festival Competition . In 1981 he also received the support award of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia for music . This was followed by master classes and private studies with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf .

He made his debut as an opera singer in 1978 as Papageno and Eugen Onegin at the Staatstheater Oldenburg. From 1979 to 1986 he sang at the music theaters of Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Wiesbaden and Salzburg in productions by Ulrich Brecht, Marcel Bluwal, Hans Korte, Giancarlo del Monaco and Sir Peter Ustinov under conductors such as Marc Albrecht, Ernst Märzendorfer, Rolf Reuter and Heinz Wallberg Lyrical cavalry baritone roles such as Rossini's Barbier and Dandini, Mozart's Guglielmo, Figaro and Conte Almaviva, Donizetti's Malatesta, Leoncavallos Silvio, Lortzing's Zar and Britten's Sid. Harry Kupfer engaged him as Marcello in his productions of Puccini's La Bohème at the Komische Oper Berlin and the Volksoper Vienna.

Engagements as a concert singer have taken Berthold Possemeyer to the music centers of Europe, the USA and Israel: Bach Weeks Ansbach, Berliner Festwochen, May Festival Wiesbaden, Rheingau Music Festival, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Prague Spring, Mostly Mozart London, Carnegie-Hall New York, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Lucerne Festival Weeks. He sang with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Munich Philharmonic, the radio symphony orchestras of Berlin, Frankfurt, Hanover and Stuttgart, the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic and the Academy of Ancient Music London under conductors such as Frieder Bernius, Herbert Blomstedt, Claus -Peter Flor, Uwe Gronostay, Leopold Hager, Christopher Hogwood, Eliahu Inbal, Neville Marriner, Yehudi Menuhin, Peter Neumann and Krzysztof Penderecki.

From 1988 to 2017 Berthold Possemeyer taught at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts , since 1990 as a professor. Here he initially took on the training of school and church musicians, choir conductors and singing teachers in the music education department. In 2003 he switched to the performing arts and music theater department, where he trained aspiring concert and opera singers. His students include Björn Bürger , Xiao Feng Cai, Ill-Hoon Choung, Sabine Fischmann , Markus Flaig , Nikola Ivanov, Yang Li, Philipp Alexander Mehr, Marian Müller, Georg Poplutz , Riccardo Romeo and Mischa Schelomianski.

Together with the chanson singer Sabine Fischmann, the actor Till Krabbe and the pianist and composer Markus Neumeyer he founded and forms the music-literary "Holzhausen Quartet", named after the seat of the Frankfurt community foundation, the Holzhausen-Schlösschen Frankfurt, where their premieres respective cross-over music theater productions take place: Die fromme Helene. A middle-class chamber musical based on Wilhelm Busch (2006), A Midsummer Night's Dream. Cunning chamber musical based on William Shakespeare (2010), And If They Didn't Die. All 199 fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm in a chamber musical (2012), What you want. An unrestrained chamber musical based on William Shakespeare (2014). Much Ado About Nothing, Sly chamber musical based on William Shakespeare (2017). With these productions he made guest appearances in Germany, Switzerland and Italy (South Tyrol).

Web links

• Berthold Possemeyer at Operissimo  on the basis of the Great Singer Lexicon
• Bertold Possemeyer Vita
• Possemeyer, Berthold bmlo.de