Helga Pilarczyk

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Helga Pilarczyk (born March 12, 1925 in Schöningen , Helmstedt district , † September 15, 2011 in Hamburg ) was a German opera singer ( soprano ).

Life

Pilarczyk originally wanted to be a pianist . She took piano lessons at the Braunschweig Conservatory and continued her piano studies at the Hamburg University of Music . At the same time she studied singing in Braunschweig and Hamburg , where her voice was trained, initially as an alto .

In 1951 she made her debut as an opera singer at the Staatstheater Braunschweig in the role of educator Irmentraut in the play opera Der Waffenschmied . From 1951 to 1954 she was a permanent member of the ensemble there. In the 1954/55 season, Pilarczyk moved to the ensemble of the Hamburg State Opera , now as a dramatic soprano , where she was permanently engaged up to and including the 1966/67 season.

Pilarczyk sang almost all the important specialist roles in Hamburg and soon developed into a specialist in modern times , especially in the twelve-tone music of the 20th century. Her repertoire included the title role in Salome , the Dyer in Woman Without a Shadow , the title role in Turandot , Renata in Fiery Angel , Mother in The Prisoner and Iocaste in Oedipus Rex .

Her brilliant roles, with which she also made international guest appearances, were in particular Marie in Wozzeck and the title role in Lulu . She sang Lulu in a new production in Hamburg in 1957, alongside Toni Blankenheim as Dr. Nice, with “clearer, brighter, tonal purity not clouded by any oscillation”, in the now legendary production by Günther Rennert ; she was "demonic, slim and dazzlingly beautiful, in the game alternating between snake-like mobility and soulless rigidity". In addition, the monodramas Expectation and Pierrot Lunaire by Arnold Schönberg were among her important vocal pieces.

In the course of her career, however, Pilarczyk occasionally interpreted roles in the mezzo- soprano; for example, she sang the title role in Carmen and Princess Eboli in Don Carlos .

Pilarczyk took part in several opera premieres, including in October 1955 at the Hamburg State Opera in Pallas Athene weeping by Ernst Krenek , in September 1956 at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin as a girl in König Hirsch , in Hamburg in 1963 as Noah's wife in Igor Stravinsky's Work Die Sintflut ( The Flood ) and in June 1964 in Hamburg as Medea in the opera Der goldene Bock , also by Ernst Krenek.

Pilarczyk had guest contracts at the Zurich Opera House (1955-1958, there 1955/56 as Marie in Wozzeck , in the title role in Antigone by Arthur Honegger and as mother in Die Heimkehr by Marcel Mihalovici ), at the Deutsche Oper Berlin (1956-1960, under 1960 as Marie in Wozzeck ) and since 1964 at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein .

She appeared at the Covent Garden Opera in London (1958 as Salome), at the Holland Festival (1958 as a woman in anticipation ; 1960 and 1968 as Marie in Wozzeck ), at the Maggio Musicale in Florence (1959 as a composer in Ariadne on Naxos and as a woman in expectation by Arnold Schönberg), at the Glyndebourne Festival (1960 as Colombina in Arlecchino by Ferruccio Busoni ), at the Washington Opera (1960 as a woman in expectation ), at the Grand Opéra Paris (1963 as Marie in Wozzeck ), at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan (1963 guest performance by the Hamburg State Opera, title role in Lulu ), at the Music Biennale in Zagreb (May 1963, guest performance by the Hamburg State Opera, title role in Lulu ), at the Wiener Festwochen (1965 as a woman in anticipation ) and at the Lyric Opera in Chicago (season 1965/1966 as Marie in Wozzeck ). In February / March 1965 she also sang Marie in Wozzeck at the Metropolitan Opera in New York .

Bodenstein in
the women's garden

In 1967 Pilarczyk largely withdrew from the opera stage for family reasons in order to devote himself to raising children. In July 1969 she took on the role of courtesan Metella in the operetta Pariser Leben at the Cologne Opera , in a production by Jean-Louis Barrault . From 1975 she taught singing at the Hamburg Conservatory . In 1982, after an artistic break of almost 15 years, she reinterpreted the cycle of poems Pierrot Lunaire at the Bremen Theater . In December 1983 / January 1984 and April 1985 she returned to the stage of the Hamburg State Opera for a Schönberg evening with a staged performance of the oratorio Die Jakobsleiter . In 1988 she could also be heard in performances by Jacob's Ladder in London .

Pilarczyk was appointed Hamburg Chamber Singer for her musical merits . Pilarczyk had been a member of the Free Academy of the Arts in Hamburg since 1973 .

Pilarczyk was the mother of two children. Her daughter, Isabella Vértes-Schütter , is the artistic director of the Ernst Deutsch Theater in Hamburg. Helga Pilarczyk last lived in the Hamburg district of Hochkamp . Pilarczyk died after a short, serious illness at the age of 86 in the Hamburg hospice Hamburg Leuchtfeuer . She is buried in the women's garden in Hamburg's Ohlsdorf cemetery .

Audio documents

There are only relatively few original studio recordings that document Pilarczyk's voice on vinyl . At the European Book and Phonoclub a cross section of the opera Carmen (with Pilarczyk in the title role) was released on record in the 1960s , with Herbert Ernst Groh (Don José), Ernst Krukowski (Escamillo), Valerie Bak (Micaëla) and Ruth -Margret Pütz (Frasquita) were her partners. Under the direction of Leonard Bernstein , Pilarczyk sang the soprano solo in the Glagolitic Mass ( Glagolská mše ) by Leoš Janáček , which was also published by CBS in the 1960s . In 1962, under the musical direction of Hermann Scherchen, Arnold Schönberg's monodrama Expectation (with Pilarczyk as a woman) was recorded on the record label WERGO . In the same year Mercury recorded the so-called Lulu Suite under Antal Dorati. A recording of the melodrama Pierrot Lunaire was made with Pierre Boulez .

However, there are several live recordings of opera performances and radio recordings . In 1955 she sang Grete in the opera Der ferne Klang , conducted by Winfried Zillig , at the side of Helmut Krebs , in a radio recording of the Norddeutscher Rundfunk . There is also a live recording by Bayerischer Rundfunk from March 1956, in which Pilarczyk, under the musical direction of Hermann Scherchen, sings the role of mother in Luigi Dallapiccola's one-act play The Prisoner . The 1960 Arlecchino performance at the Glyndebourne Festival with Pilarczyk in the role of Colombina is also available as a live recording.

A complete recording of the opera Der Mantel , a radio production by Westdeutscher Rundfunk from 1961, was published in German on CD by the Hamburg Archive for Singing Art , in which Pilarczyk sings the role of Giorgette.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Belcanto tones for Lulu and Eboli in: DIE WELT from March 10, 2000
  2. ↑ The sweet, wild animal performance review in: DIE ZEIT from April 25, 1957
  3. ↑ König Hirsch cast of the premiere
  4. ↑ International meeting point: Hamburg State Opera Performance review in: DIE ZEIT from May 10, 1963
  5. ↑ Late return of a former opera sensation ( Memento of the original from October 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) 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. Performance review in: Der Tagesspiegel , February 1960  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.alternobis.de
  6. ↑ 1965 SEASON PERFORMANCE AND CAST ARCHIVE Official website of the Lyric Opera
  7. ^ Wozzeck MET debuts
  8. ↑ Wozzeck MET Archives
  9. ↑ Journey into the past ( memento of the original dated November 30, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. tanznetz.de  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.tanznetz.de
  10. ↑ New singing teacher . In: Hamburger Abendblatt of October 11, 1975.
  11. ↑ Angel of loneliness, performance review in: DIE ZEIT of January 29, 1982
  12. ^ Free Academy of the Arts members
  13. ^ Death of a legend of the opera Obituary in: DIE WELT from September 17, 2011
  14. ↑ The distant sound cast and production details
  15. ↑ Il prigioniero ( Memento of the original from April 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) 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. www.operone.de (directory of the complete recordings) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.operone.de
  16. ↑ Arlecchino or The Windows. ( Memento of the original from April 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) 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. www.operone.de (directory of the complete recordings) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.operone.de
personal data
SURNAME Pilarczyk, Helga
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German opera singer (soprano)
DATE OF BIRTH March 12, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Schöningen , Helmstedt district
DATE OF DEATH September 15, 2011
Place of death Hamburg