Günther Hofmann

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Günther Hofmann in the title role in Verdi's Falstaff, 1972
(Photo: Walter Hinghaus )

Günther Hofmann (born October 2, 1927 in Dresden ; † November 13, 2013 in Meiningen ) was a German opera singer ( bass baritone ), director and director.

Life

Childhood and school

Günther Hofmann was born in Dresden-Johannstadt under simple circumstances. Even as a young boy he had the desire to become an opera singer. In his autobiography he wrote: “I went to the Dresden Opera every evening (standing parquet 1.80 marks). ... Meanwhile I learned aria texts from Reclam textbooks by heart and tormented my dear piano teacher with the study of opera piano literature ... which I soon performed by heart and with orchestral effort ... "From his elementary school in 1938 after the 4th grade he was admitted to the Dresden Kreuzchor suggested that he passed. However, his parents were against it because of the boarding school stay associated with it, and so he was only transferred to the 29th elementary school - a middle school at the time - on Riesaer Platz.

During the war he was initially an assistant conductor in the war effort for the Dresden tram , and later an electrical trainee in the Sachsenwerk Dresden-Niedersedlitz . On the side he was an extra at the opera and drama. So he got to know well-known artists, as well as the repertoire, singers and conductors as well as the stage technology of that time . Kurt Böhme became his role model. As an extra he saw Richard Strauss at the podium in the opera Capriccio .

Military service and imprisonment

After graduating from high school (June 8, 1944) he was drafted into the Reich Labor Service and then into the Wehrmacht . The basic training and radio operator training was followed by horse care in the Neuruppin and Kurzig cavalry barracks (now in Polish: Międzyrzecz ). He was released on December 23, 1944; on January 12, 1945 he was called up to the artillery replacement and training battalion near Prague (then " Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia "). He experienced the end of the war without any significant combat engagement and after the surrender went on foot towards Bavaria. At Písek he came into US custody; in Blatná he was handed over to Czech partisans and then to the Red Army . This was followed by a hike full of privation to Brno , where he was admitted to an epidemic hospital (former girls' school below the Špilberk fortress ) with dysentery , collapsed and was pronounced dead (July 13, 1945). A Soviet doctor discovered the last signs of life and saved his life. This event shaped his gratitude to the Russian people. In November 1945 he was transported by passenger train via Vienna , Szeged , Odessa , Gori to Tiflis (district Naphtlug / Nawtlugi / Navtlughi on the Kura ) to camp 236, where he arrived on December 20, 1945.

With musically like-minded prisoners of war and with the support of Soviet and Georgian camp officers, he succeeded in staging and staging plays and in visiting the Rustaveli Theater in Tbilisi . At the Sunday events he was the announcer, led the choir and wrote the scores for songs and overtures for orchestra and choir from memory. "[...] my musical talent, the musical memory that could be reliably retrieved, helped me." Here he learned Russian and also some Georgian , which was very useful to him. In the autumn of 1946 the camp changed from the Nawtlugi district to the Didube district and later to Rustavi . He was released on December 6, 1949. Via Baku , Rostow-on-Don , Charkow , Kiev , Brest , Frankfurt (Oder) and Cottbus , he reached Dresden, where he met his parents again on December 23, 1949.

Study and Zittau

In Dresden he was immediately admitted to the Academy for Music and Theater to study singing with Herbert Meißner (1889–1954) without an examination . Further teachers were Siegmund Wittig and Fidelio F. Finke . He completed his training as an opera singer in 1953 "with very good success" . He wrote his theses on "The Development of Russian Music in the 19th Century to a National Art" and "The People in Boris Godunow ". In it he wrote, among other things: “And what the Tsar had feared had become reality. The farmer of Russia stood on the stage. The starving people shouted their misery in the perfumed parquet. “Here the Russian soul reveals itself in the music.

Hofmann found his first job at the Zittau City Theater as hereditary forester Cuno in Weber's Freischütz and as Tommaso in d'Albert's lowlands . Guest roles led him a. a. to the Chemnitz Opera House . In Zittau he met his future wife as a dancer. In 1955 they married and moved to Meiningen .

Meiningen and The Opera

Hofmann lived and worked in Meiningen until his death. He was hired at the Meiningen Theater as a “singer for operas and operettas”. He has a son and a daughter who also work in a musical environment. - He kept the connection to Dresden with his parents as well as relatives and friends intensively for many years by means of a GDR car Trabant and that until 2003 without the federal highway 71 .

From 1960 his activities were supplemented with “directing duties for operas and operettas”. In 1963 productions were added. In 1967 he became the first chamber singer of the Meininger Theater. From 1973 to 1993 he was director of the musical theater division of the Meininger Theater. He also appeared as a singer in symphony concerts and oratorio performances. The German television radio also obliged him.

Extensive guest performances by the Meininger Theater in the City Theater of Budweis were based on his initiative ; after the fall of 1989 , this tradition was not continued. On the occasion of his guest tours to Budweis, he learned Czech.

The imprisonment in Georgia , at that time a part of the republic of Soviet Russia , left a lasting mark on these people at Hofmann, which is evident from his theses, his role in Boris and his efforts to establish cooperation between the Tbilisi and Meiningen opera houses. He writes: “In the 4 years I have learned to love the country Georgia because of its subtropical vegetation and I have admired its old culture, which the red revolution had decimated and over-wished with endless banners and Stalin pictures. … I have never given up the thought of seeing the Caucasus and the city of Tbilisi again. Unforgettable memories of the beautiful area and its people, of romantic mountain gorges, of the subtropical flora and the mix of peoples increasingly displaced the gloomy memory of the captivity. ”So it was logical to visit the Tbilisi Opera in 1981 and 1984 to exchange guest performances, whereupon he did the Georgian Opera Mindia staged by Otar Taktakishvili at the Meininger Theater. The premiere took place on November 12, 1981, an exchange did not take place.

His production of The Flying Dutchman at the Meininger Theater before the Wende (premiere on May 27, 1988) was under the motto: “Oh! without hope as I am, I give myself over to hope! "(1st act, 3rd scene)

Meiningen and the Meininger Theater were his world. He worked here until 1993. Nevertheless, he closes his autobiography with the words of the Dresden local history researcher and former director of the local city ​​museum Matthias Griebel :

"The further a person from Dresden moves away from their homeland, the greater their love for her becomes."

Even after his retirement, Hofmann remained connected to the Meiningen opera scene, as his publications show.

The maxims of his work were reality and comprehensibility. He was in contradiction to younger directors who subordinate old operas to modern interpretations. Hofmann was an excellent singer and full-blooded comedian , a "serving" director , someone who cared about the concerns of the respective authors, as well as a patient, humanly accessible and administratively consistent "boss" . He writes about this in his autobiography: “Terms such as 'faithfulness to the work' fell into disrepute because one tried to equate them with 'museum-like' and old-fashioned and unimaginative. I have always taken the authors seriously and at their word: if you write 'in the deep forest' for the scene, I won't let that play in the men's closet. Correct opera music dominates the scene like the 'Freischütz' dominates the forest. Romanticism means: the reflection of human conflicts, moods and feelings in nature. That corresponded to the mindset of the time. For us it is just as worth communicating as a painting, like the character of the music. Everything else is falsification, is grafting on a foreign ideology, is historical know-it-all, is the destruction of the author's intention. "

He had a special affinity for Richard Strauss and Richard Wagner , which is also evident from his roles. According to the judgment of the conductor Rolf Reuter , Hofmann was "the best faninal in the world". He wrote several essays about Richard Wagner.

As an interpreter of the important and mostly difficult baritone roles from Verdi to Wagner, the Russian operas, and also works by contemporary composers, Hofmann was an outstanding singer who would certainly have sung himself in a prominent position even in large houses. Sachs, Rigoletto, Boris, Einstein, and some comical characters in operas are unforgettable. In addition, as a director he relied on traditional loyalty to the work, on singing and at the same time ensured serious continuity in Meiningen's opera business for thirty years. Most of his younger colleagues rubbed against his staging style.

He was also involved in the social field; For example, he and Rolf-Christoph Ullmann campaigned for the Meiningen city administration to preserve the collection of the original brochures by the world-famous theater painters, brothers Max and Gotthold Brückner from Coburg, in Elisabethenburg Castle . It was always an honor and an obligation for his guests to show and comment on this collection. He was one of the few who lived in the same house for such a long period; that is why he was a sought-after conversation partner when it came to coming to terms with history. That was "his" field until his death.

Hofmann had two hobbies: his aquarium and its model railway track 0 - costumes with workers cap and Winkerkelle . When he moved to Meiningen only in 2005, he had to give up both hobbies.

From 1995, but especially from 2008 to the end of 2010, Hofmann wrote and dictated his autobiography with the support of Horst Arnold. It comprises 93 typed A4 pages.

He was buried in the Heidefriedhof in Dresden.

Günther Hofmann in the title role in Verdis Macbeth, 1973
(Photo: Walter Hinghaus )

roll

Hofmann played over 100 roles, here is a selection:

Guest performances led Hofmann u. a

Director

As a director, Günther Hofmann worked on over 50 productions from 1963, the following is a selection:

Guest productions took place u. a.

Awards

membership

  • Honorary member of the German Richard Wagner Society V. Bayreuth (awarded on October 6, 2007)

Fonts

  • Günther Hofmann: The people in Boris Godunow - thesis in the main subject opera singing for state exams . May 10, 53.
  • Günther Hofmann: The development of Russian music in the 19th century to a national art - thesis in the subject of music history for state exams . April 22, 53.
  • Horst Arnold, Günther Hofmann: Chronicle of the Meininger Opera Choir . Published by the Meininger Theater, 2012
  • Günther Hofmann: Advice for a modern opera director . In: Messages from the German Richard Wagner Society e. V. Bayreuth . tape 24/25 , November 1997, pp. 17 ff .
  • Günther Hofmann: The Meininger "Ring" . In: Messages from the German Richard Wagner Society e. V. Bayreuth . tape 40/41 , November 2001, pp. 3 ff .
  • Günther Hofmann: "Von der Meistersinger hold blessed art" - experiences and confessions of an old opera singer (I) . In: Messages from the German Richard Wagner Society e. V. Bayreuth . tape 44/45 , November 2002, pp. 10-12 .
  • Günther Hofmann: “Von der Meistersinger hold blessed art” - experiences and confessions of an old opera singer (II) . In: Messages from the German Richard Wagner Society e. V. Bayreuth . tape 46/47 , June 2003, pp. 10-13 .

Web links

Commons : Günther Hofmann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Günther Hofmann: Autobiography . Christmas 2010, pages a / -, b / 50, c / 87, d / 51, e / 93, f / 72, g / -; in the estate of Günther Hofmann , see this one.
  2. ↑ coordinates of Tbilisi Navtlughi: 41 ° 40 '51.02 "  N , 44 ° 53' 17.84"  O
  3. ^ Ulrich Austermühle et all: Places of Detention of German Prisoners of War in the Soviet Union (1941–1956) / Findbuch . Ed .: Russia / Archivnoe Agentstvo; Saxon Memorials Foundation in memory of the victims of political tyranny; Rossiysky Gosudarstvennyj Voennyj Archive. Dresden, Kassel, Moscow, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-934382-22-0 , pp. 20, 45 .
  4. ^ A fellow prisoner, Willi Wagner from Dresden-Zschachwitz, confirmed this fact to the author in 1962.
  5. ↑ coordinates of Tbilisi Didube: 41 ° 44 '59.96 "  N , 44 ° 46' 47.75"  O
  6. ↑ Certificate in the estate
  7. ↑ a b c d e f estate of Günther Hofmann in the Thuringia archive portal . Retrieved July 31, 2014.
  8. ↑ Cornelia Hofmann, Birgit Tradler: The feather room of August the strong . Verlag der Kunst Dresden, 2003, ISBN 3-364-00604-0 .
  9. ↑ a b Horst Arnold, Günther Hofmann: Chronicle of the Meininger Opera Choir . Ed. "Das Meininger Theater", published in 2012.
  10. ↑ a b c d Werner P. Seiferth: private archive . Werner P. Seiferth: Richard Wagner in the GDR - attempt to take stock . In: Richard Wagner Association Leipzig e. V. (Ed.): Leipzig contributions to Wagner research 4 . Sax Verlag, 2012 (dedicated to the singer and director Günther Hofmann from Meininger Theater in solidarity and with thanks).
  11. ^ A b Günther Hofmann: Advice for a modern opera director . In: Messages from the German Richard Wagner Society e. V. Bayreuth . tape 24/25 , November 1997, pp. 17 ff .
  12. ↑ a b see section Fonts .
  13. ↑ Werner P. Seiferth: Chamber singer Günther Hofmann died on November 13, 2013 in Meiningen. (No longer available online.) Online marker, information of the day (Saturday, November 16, 2013), archived from the original on May 14, 2014 ; Retrieved April 30, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.der-neue-merker.eu
  14. ^ Alfred Erck: History of the Meininger Theater: 1831 - 2006 . Ed .: The Meininger Theater - South Thuringian State Theater. 2006, p. 190–191 (see also pages 185–194).
  15. ↑ The magic world of the backdrop. (No longer available online.) Meiningen museums, archived from the original on February 25, 2014 ; Retrieved April 24, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.meiningermuseen.de
  16. ↑ Werner P. Seiferth: October 2. Günther Hofmann turns 85 (No longer available online.) Online marker, birthdays in October 2012, archived from the original on May 2, 2014 ; Retrieved April 28, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.der-neue-merker.eu
  17. ↑ Susann Winkel: A stage life in the service of Wagner . In: Free Word . Suhler Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, November 23, 2013, p. 22 (Contribution to the death of Kammersänger Günther Hofmann).
  18. ↑ Manfred Weckwerth: Optimistic tragedy. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on August 10, 2014 ; accessed on July 31, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sopos.org
  19. ↑ Wischnewski's biography in “mime centrum berlin”. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on August 8, 2014 ; accessed on July 31, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / mimedb.oopen.de
  20. ↑ a b Honorary Members of the German Richard Wagner Society. V. Bayreuth. Retrieved April 23, 2014 .
personal data
SURNAME Hofmann, Günther
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German opera singer (bass baritone), director and director
DATE OF BIRTH October 2, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH November 13, 2013
Place of death Meiningen