Franz Diener (singer)

Franz Diener ( February 19, 1849 in Dessau - May 14, 1879 ibid) was a German violinist, composer and opera singer ( baritone , tenor ).

Life

After showing musical inclination from an early age, Diener was trained on both the piano and the violin. At 17 he became an apprentice at the Dessau court orchestra.

Since he had little prospect of a career there, he accepted an engagement as first violinist in the orchestra of the court music director Benjamin Bilse, which is currently playing in Liegnitz . At that time he tried his hand at composing songs and dared to dedicate some of his songs to Princess Maria Anna von Anhalt-Dessau without any intermediary whatsoever . She even offered him an honorary salary, which he refused, but, delighted by his singing, ordered his vocal training. His baritone developed in a surprising way and as a result he gave up the concert podium and devoted himself to the stage after a successful first dramatic appearance at the Louisen Theater in Berlin.

He soon followed a call to the Dessau court theater , where he made his debut as "Valentin" and "Luna". His next engagement was in Mainz, where he performed as "Masaniello" with huge success. There he also met Franz Schott , the publisher of Richard Wagner's works . This also recommended him to Bayreuth. And so he stayed for three months with Wagner, who himself studied all of the tenor parts he had created.

From 1872 to 1873 he was engaged in Cologne and also took part in the Rheinische Musikfest held there . From Cologne he was called to London to take part in a series of concerts in the Wagner Society. He celebrated great triumphs in London, which established his reputation as a Wagner interpreter.

This was followed by a one-year engagement at the Hof Opera Theater in Berlin. In Hamburg he was hired by Bernhard Pollini for nine months and there received 60,000 marks for this period, probably the highest sum that an artist ever received as a salary. Despite his great success, he preferred to move from Hamburg to the Dresden Court Theater. There he celebrated great success until he had to break off on February 8, 1879 in the role of "Masaniello" in the middle of the performance due to a malaise. Although he recovered and gave a guest performance in Frankfurt on March 23, 1879 as "Eleazar". But he had to stop there too.

He was brought to his family in Dessau, where he recovered noticeably, but his life ended prematurely at the age of only 30 on May 14, 1879.

literature

• Ludwig Eisenberg : Large biographical lexicon of the German stage in the XIX. Century . Verlag von Paul List , Leipzig 1903, pp. 198 f., ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).

Web links

• Franz Diener in the Bavarian Musicians' Lexicon Online (BMLO)
• Franz Diener 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.