Harald Serafin

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Harald Serafin with his wife Ingeborg (2016)

Harald Serafin (born December 24, 1931 in Kybartai , Lithuania ) is an Austrian singer (baritone). From 1992 to 2012 he was the artistic director and artistic director of the Mörbisch Seefestspiele .

Life

In 1939 Lithuania was occupied by the Soviet Union, and in 1940 the family fled to Memel in East Prussia, where they lived for three years. As the front line drew closer, the family fled to Bamberg in Bavaria , where the parents opened a textile shop.

After graduating from high school in 1951, Harald Serafin began to study medicine at the request of his family, but broke off prematurely and instead studied singing. Serafin studied with KS Willi Domgraf-Fassbaender in Nuremberg , among others . This was followed by engagements in Switzerland ( St. Gallen , Bern , Zurich ) and Germany ( Aachen , Ulm ). At the Zurich June Festival he sang together with Anneliese Rothenberger in Sutermeister's “ Madame Bovary ”.

Otto Schenk discovered Serafin's comic talent and made him the “singing bon vivant of the operetta”. The New York Times referred to him as " Walter Matthau of the Viennese operetta" in reference to his physiognomy . After a vocal cord operation in 1989, he gave up singing for a while. In 1992 Felix Dvorak brought him to his Berndorf Festival, where he staged "Moral" with Ludwig Thomas. This first excursion into spoken theater was so successful that the theater in der Josefstadt brought him to the Kammerspiele every year as a star guest, where he celebrated triumphant audiences, always under the direction of Felix Dvorak. For 20 years he was director of the Mörbisch Seefestspiele .

Serafin is now known to the broad Austrian public through his appearances as a juror in the second season of the TV show " Dancing Stars ", which was broadcast in the spring of 2006 on the ORF 1 program. With mostly non-binding, often meaningless comments - mostly flattery directed at the respective dance couple - he skillfully played the part of the "friendly" judge, who also gave weaker dance performances good grades. As the show continued for several months, his frequently recurring comment “It was wonderful!” Achieved the status of a running gag . The word he loved before became his nickname as "Mister Wunderbar" and was included in the title of his 2009 autobiography as "Not always it was wonderful". In the popular culture context, the phrase “wonderful” had such a brief connotation with Serafin's person that he advanced to become a “cult figure” in the mass media and was hired to advertise a furniture store chain.

In another ORF recording , in which Serafin gave a short speech in Mörbisch, he addressed the present Secretary of State for Art, Franz Morak, with the ambiguous remark: “You know what I think of you.” Morak, turned to the audience, then tried to appease: “He doesn't mean it that way” - with which he suggested the unfriendly interpretation of Serafin's statement as the correct one. Harald Serafin then countered unmoved: "Yes, I mean it."

In October 2008 Harald Serafin played the tabloid comedy Sunshine Boys by Neil Simon , directed by Michael Schottenberg, together with Peter Weck at the Vienna Volkstheater . At the turn of the year 2014/2015 he appeared several times as Baron Mirko Zeta in The Merry Widow at the Cologne Opera .

In March 2015 he was on stage at Schon wieder Sonntag in the Theater in der Josefstadt with Otto Schenk and Hilde Dalik .

His son Daniel from his existing marriage to Ingeborg and his daughter Martina Serafin from his marriage to Mirjana Irosch have both followed in their father's footsteps and are opera singers (baritone and soprano).

Awards

When Serafin's apartment in Vienna was broken into on the evening of August 29, 2009, among other valuables, the Golden Decoration of Honor for Services to the State of Vienna and the Medal of Honor of the Federal Capital Vienna were stolen.

Web links

Commons : Harald Serafin  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Doris Priesching: "Wonderful! Wonderful!" Harald Serafin in a STANDARD interview. In: derStandard.at/Etat. May 12, 2006, accessed on February 8, 2013 (also in Der Standard print edition of May 5, 2006): "DER STANDARD: Where did your preference for the word" wonderful "come from? Serafin: I've always loved it, now people are discovering it too. Not "wundererboa" - that's rubbish! But: "Wonderful!" You have to let the sensuality in the stomach. Wherever I go, people greet me with "Wunnnderbar!" That's wonderful!"
  2. ↑ That was 2006 - socially. Annual review. In: burgenland.orf.at. December 31, 2006, accessed on February 8, 2013 : “Its director, Harald Serafin, will not only be an honorary member of the Vienna Volksoper, but also a celebrated juror at the ORF's" Dancing Stars ". As "Mister Wunderbar" he is making himself a new brand. "
  3. ↑ APA, editor: Mister Wunderbar. Harald Serafin is 80. In: oe1.orf.at. December 24, 2011, accessed on February 8, 2013 : "In the second season of the ORF celebrity dance show" Dancing Stars ", Serafin is on the jury and is named" Mister Wunderbar "because of his" Wunderbar "exclamations in his assessments. Since then he's also known among the youth, he says. "
  4. ^ Kammerspiele der Josefstadt - Sunday again
  5. ↑ The state's cultural prizes awarded. Retrieved June 27, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Big stage for Harald Serafin. In: ORF.at . January 17, 2020, accessed January 18, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Burglary at Serafin: Treacherous Medals of Honor , report DiePresse.com from September 1, 2009 , accessed on September 22, 2009.
predecessor Office successor
Rudolf Buczolich Director of the Mörbisch Seefestspiele
1992–2012 		Dagmar Schellenberger
personal data
SURNAME Serafin, Harald
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian singer (baritone)
DATE OF BIRTH December 24, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Kybartai , Lithuania