Elisabeth Schärtel

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Elisabeth Schärtel (born October 6, 1919 in Weiden in the Upper Palatinate ; † August 24, 2012 there ) was a German opera singer with the voices of mezzo-soprano and alto .

Life

Schärtel came from a family of craftsmen . Her parents ran a butcher's shop in Weiden , whose name can still be seen on the old town hall today. Schärtel came to music through house music . She initially received private lessons. Later she studied singing with Anna Bahr-Mildenburg in Munich and with the well-known concert and oratorio singer and singing teacher Henny Wolff in Hamburg .

She made her debut at the Stadttheater Gießen in the 1942/43 season . This was followed by engagements at the Trier City Theater (1943–1944), the Regensburg City Theater (1946–1950), the Freiburg City Theater (1950–1951), the Braunschweig State Theater (1951–1957) and the Nuremberg Opera House (1957–1959). In 1959 she became a permanent member of the Cologne Opera , of which she was a member until 1967. In 1965 she sang the role of Stolzius' mother in the world premiere of the opera The Soldiers by Bernd Alois Zimmermann . She later appeared there as a guest until the early 1970s.

In 1954 Schärtel sang for the first time at the Bayreuth Festival . From 1954 to 1967 she was a permanent member of the Bayreuth Festival. There she took over both the major mezzo-soprano and alto roles in Richard Wagner's musical dramas , as well as smaller roles. 1954–1955 she sang Mary in Der Fliegende Holländer there , 1958–1961 every year Magdalene in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg , 1962 Erda in Das Rheingold and Ortrud in Lohengrin . She also appeared in Bayreuth as Wellgunde (1955, 1961), Floßhilde (1957), Waltraute (1954–1958, 1961, 1963), Siegrune (1965), Grimgerde (1966, 1967), 1. Norn (1961–1963) and 2. Norn (1957) in the tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen and as a flower girl (1955–1958, 1965) and a squire (1955, 1956, 1964–1967) in Parsifal .

In 1961 Schärtel made a guest appearance as Adelaide in Arabella at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence . Also in 1961 she was heard as Magdalene at the Teatro San Carlos in Lisbon . In 1962 she appeared at the Hamburg State Opera as a wet nurse in Die Frau ohne Schatten , a production by Oscar Fritz Schuh under the musical direction of Wolfgang Sawallisch , in which Franz Crass and Helga Pilarczyk were her partners. In 1966 she sang Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde at the Vienna State Opera .

Schärtel appeared regularly at the Deutsche Oper Berlin , where she sang Brangäne, Kundry in Parsifal and the sexton in Jenůfa , among others . Guest appearances have taken her to the Grand Opéra Paris (1957), to the Bordeaux Opera House (1965) and, since 1964, to the Zurich Opera House several times .

In 1973 Schärtel said goodbye to the opera stage. There were personal reasons for her withdrawal. After two of her sisters and their husbands were killed in a plane crash in 1972, she took responsibility for her five nieces and nephews.

In 1962 Schärtel received the Max Reger Medal from the city of Weiden for her musical merits . In later years Schärtel worked as a music teacher at the Nuremberg University of Music .

Schärtel lived in her hometown Weiden in the Upper Palatinate. There she celebrated her 90th birthday in October 2009.

She died on August 24, 2012 in Weiden in the Upper Palatinate. She was buried there on August 29, 2012 in the Weiden city cemetery.

Audio documents

There are only relatively few original studio recordings that document Schärtel's voice on vinyl .

Under the direction of Robert Stolz , Schärtel sang the role of the gypsy Czipra in a complete studio recording of the operetta Der Zigeunerbaron in May 1964 .

However, there are numerous live recordings of operas and radio recordings . Numerous performances with Elisabeth Schärtel, especially from the Bayreuth Festival, were recorded every year for radio and later published on records. In the meantime, these performances have also been re-released on CD, often under various different record labels. The world premiere recording of the opera The Soldiers from 1965 was also released on the record label WERGO .

A complete recording of the opera Falstaff , a radio production by Westdeutscher Rundfunk from 1966 in German with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in the title role, was published on CD by the Hamburg Archive for Singing Art, in which Schärtel sings the role of Meg Page.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Elisabeth Schärtel ; Obituary in: Opernglas ; Edition December 2012, p. 55
  2. ↑ a b c d voice has died down Oberpfalznetz.de of August 30, 2008; last accessed on December 2, 2012
  3. ^ Henny Wolff short portrait at Kulturschaffende Frauen; Women's garden e. V.
  4. ^ Elisabeth Schärtel Vita on the homepage of the Bayreuth Festival
  5. ↑ The woman without a shadow in: Die Bühne , 1962 (excerpts from Google Books)
  6. ↑ List of roles by Elisabeth Schärtel in: Chronik der Wiener Staatsoper 1945–2005 , p. 716. Löcker Verlag, Vienna 2006. ISBN 3-85409-449-3
  7. ↑ Honorary citizen and holder of the Max Reger and Citizens Medal Homepage of the city of Weiden in the Upper Palatinate ( Memento from May 14, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Schärtel, Elisabeth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German opera singer
DATE OF BIRTH October 6, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Willows in the Upper Palatinate
DATE OF DEATH August 24, 2012
Place of death Willows in the Upper Palatinate