Heinz Rückert

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Heinz Rückert (born December 17, 1904 in Darmstadt , † February 14, 1984 in Berlin ) was a German opera director . He was one of the founders of the Handel Renaissance in Halle.

Life

Rückert grew up in a musical family and came into contact with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach at an early age . His great-grandfather was the poet Friedrich Rückert . He learned to play the piano autodidactically . After graduating from a humanistic grammar school in Darmstadt, he studied German, art and theater studies for three years in Munich, where Artur Kutscher was his most important teacher. Kutscher also brought him into contact with Handel's repertoire, which experienced its renaissance in Göttingen in the 1920s.

Kutscher placed him in 1927 with the artistic director Georg Hartmann , under whom he was to become an assistant director in Dessau. He also took part in performances at the Bauhaus stage . Then he made a stop as a theater director at the Bavarian State Theaters in Munich. In 1931 he went to Switzerland and was initially acting director at the Stadttheater St. Gallen . From 1932 to 1937 he was a director at the Zurich Opera . There he had his first Handel production in 1935. In the 1930s in Switzerland, probably rather undesirable, he went back to Germany. Without being a member of the Reichstheaterkammer , he was appointed senior director at the houses in Bielefeld and from 1939 in Breslau .

In 1941 he went to the city ​​theater in Halle an der Saale. In 1943 he was responsible for a. the first performance of Handel's Agrippina, edited by Hellmuth Christian Wolff . Even after the theater was destroyed in the course of the Allied air raids on Halle , he remained connected to the city. From 1947 to 1951 he was senior game director in Leipzig. Rückert had been a member of the Kulturbund since 1947 . In 1951 he became a professor at the Halle Musikhochschule and headed the department of opera directing, a training course established for the first time in Germany. His students included u. a. Klaus Harnisch , Reinhard Schau and Stephan Stompor . He then became opera director at the newly built Theater des Friedens in Halle. He built up a Handel collective, for which he brought the conductor Horst-Tanu Margraf and the set designer Rudolf Heinrich to Halle. From 1952 he regularly directed the Handel Festival in Halle , starting with Handel's Alcina . He became known for his method of text-through , which he first tried out in Handel's Deidamia in 1954 . In Halle he was largely responsible for the Handel renaissance of the 1950s.

As a representative of the music theater he was brought to Berlin by Walter Felsenstein in 1955 . He was engaged there until 1958 as director and head of the up-and-coming studio at the Komische Oper Berlin . From 1959 Rückert worked at the German State Opera Berlin . After Hans Pischner took over the management of the State Opera in 1963 and set other priorities, Rückert concentrated on guest productions in Leipzig and Frankfurt / Oder. For a production at the Dresden Semperoper in 1964 he was probably not given an exemption. In 1965 he became opera director in Halle again for two years, succeeding Wolfgang Gubisch . Musicology and music criticism, however, turned to new forms of performance, so that he withdrew more and more artistically even in the course of illness.

He has staged a total of sixteen Handel operas. His Mozart and Wolf-Ferrari operatic productions were also important. He also directed Telemann's Pimpinone , Tchaikovsky's Die Zauberin and Pfitzner's Christ-Elflein . His repertoire also included modern operas such as Hindemith's Cardillac and Blacher's Die Flut . In 1948 he staged the world premiere of the chamber opera Die Nachtschwalbe by Boris Blacher .

Most recently, Rückert lived with his wife near Berlin's Alexanderplatz , where he died in 1984.

Awards

literature

  • Rückert, Heinz. In: Herbert A. Frenzel , Hans Joachim Moser (eds.): Kürschner's biographical theater manual. Drama, opera, film, radio. Germany, Austria, Switzerland . De Gruyter, Berlin 1956, p. 622.
  • Rückert, Heinz . In: Ingrid Bigler-Marschall: German Theater Lexicon . Biographical and bibliographical manual . Volume 3: Pallenberg - Singer . Founded by Wilhelm Kosch . KG Saur, Munich a. a. 1992, ISBN 3-317-00456-8 .
  • Volker Fischer: History: On the 100th birthday of the director Heinz Rückert . In: Handel in-house communications 3/2004 and 1/2005, pp. 15–21 and pp. 16f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Personnel . In: Theater der Zeit 5/1984, p. 68.
  2. ↑ a b c d Myriam Sello-Christian: Connected to the opera and Handel . In: Berliner Zeitung , November 21, 1964, vol. 20, issue 321, p. 6.
  3. ^ Klaus Suckel: The State University for Theater and Music Halle. Memory of studying music in Halle . In: Handel House Communications 1/1999, pp. 32–37, here: pp. 36f.
  4. ^ Klaus Klingbeil: On the death of Heinz Rückert . In: Berliner Zeitung , March 8, 1984, vol. 40, issue 58, p. 7.
  5. ↑ Winner of the National Prize 1957 . In: Berliner Zeitung , October 7, 1957, vol. 13, issue 234, p. 6.
  6. ↑ Christoph Rink: Chronology of the Handel price . In: Announcements of the Friends and Sponsors of the Handel House in Halle eV 1/2012, pp. 20–25, here: p. 23.
  7. ↑ State Council awarded high awards . In: Berliner Zeitung , March 25, 1965, vol. 21, issue 84, p. 2.
  8. ↑ Honorary member of the German State Opera . In: Berliner Zeitung , December 20, 1979, vol. 35, issue 301, p. 7.
personal data
SURNAME Rückert, Heinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German opera director
DATE OF BIRTH December 17, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Darmstadt
DATE OF DEATH February 14, 1984
Place of death Berlin