Ejnar Forchhammer

Ejnar Forchhammer (born June 19, 1868 in Copenhagen , Denmark , † August 15, 1928 in Munich , German Empire ) was a Danish opera singer , voice type hero tenor .

Live and act

Forchhammer was one of 13 children of the teacher Johannes Nikolai Georg Forchheimer (1827-1909) and his wife Abigail (1840-1888). Johann Georg Forchhammer was his grandfather. One of his sisters was the women's rights activist Henni Forchhammer . One of his brothers, Joergen Forchhammer, lived as a vocal physiologist in Copenhagen, the other brother Viggo Forchhammer worked as a vocal teacher in the Danish capital.

He began to study mathematics in his hometown of Copenhagen, but soon developed a great interest in classical singing. He was vocal trained in Copenhagen by Sextus Miskow and in Berlin by Julius Lieban. After training in Leipzig and Paris, Forchhammer made his debut at the Lübeck City Theater in October 1895 with the role of Lohengrin . The following year the Dane went to the Dresden Court Opera. Here Forchhammer celebrated early successes as a tenor with Wagner roles, but also enjoyed success with Italian and French singing roles. In 1898 he sang there in the world premiere of the opera Kirke by August Bungert . Other early roles were Florestan (in Fidelio ), Max (in Der Freischütz ), Othello, Canto (in Der Bajazzo ), Samson (in Samson and Delila ) and Eleazar (in La Juive ). In autumn 1902, Ejnar Forchhammer moved to the Frankfurt Opera for ten years as the first tenor, and from 1912 to 1916 he was a member of the Wiesbaden Court Theater ensemble. In between, Forchhammer repeatedly undertook guest tours that took him to the City Theater of Bremen (1898), the Leipzig Opera House (1899) and the Court Theater of Stuttgart (1900). At the Vienna Court Opera he sang the Radames in Giuseppe Verdi's Aida in 1901, and Tristan at the Covent Garden Opera in London in 1901 and 1910. From the turn of the century until shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, Forchhammer took further guest performances to Munich (court opera), to Cologne (court opera), to Zurich (city theater), to Graz (city theater), to Hanover (court theater) and to Basel (city theater). In 1902 and 1913, the Copenhagen resident made guest appearances in Amsterdam with Herod in " Salome " by Richard Strauss and in 1905 sang Parsifal in the Dutch premiere. In 1906 he sang Pedro in the Frankfurt premiere of the opera Tiefland by Eugen d'Albert .

The German by choice made his last stage appearance in 1919 in his old home with the Tannhäuser . After that, Forchhammer only worked as a concert and lieder singer. In addition to his active phase as an opera singer, Ejnar Forchhammer also repeatedly worried about training the next generation. He had already worked as a singing teacher in Frankfurt and Copenhagen before opening his own opera school in Munich two years before his death in 1926. Two years earlier, in 1924, he worked in the Danish silent film Min Ven Private Detectives . Forchhammer published several treatises on Wagner and his works, including 1910 in Copenhagen with Om R. Wagner og hans Tannhäuser (About Wagner and his Tannhäuser) a music-critical study on Wagner singing.

Forchhammer had been married to concert singer Anna Kathrine (Nane) Scharffenberg (1876–1962), with whom he had two sons, since 1905.

literature

• Heinrich Hagemann (Ed.): Specialized lexicon of the German stage members . Pallas and Hagemanns Bühnen-Verlag, Berlin 1906, p. 144.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Year of birth according to the tombstone. Hagemann mentions the year 1869, an internet source 1866
2. ↑ ^{a b} Ejnar Forchhammer
3. ↑ Forchhammer at danskefilm.dk

Web links

• biography