Herbert Graf (director)

Herbert Graf (born April 10, 1903 in Vienna , † April 5, 1973 in Geneva ) was an Austrian - American opera director .

Photo by Wilhelm Willinger from the 1930s

Live and act

The son of Max Graf (1873-1958) and Olga Graf (singer, born honey, 1877) wrote his doctorate on "Richard Wagner as a director" and came over Münster and Wroclaw to Frankfurt , where he in 1930 head of the opera school at Dr. Hoch's Conservatory was. On February 1, 1930, he staged the world premiere of Arnold Schönberg's From Today to Tomorrow at the Frankfurt Opera with Else Gentner-Fischer in the role of his wife . After the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933 he was released and forced to emigrate. He went to the USA via Basel , first to Philadelphia , and finally to the Metropolitan Opera in New York (there 1936–1960). He then went to Switzerland to Zurich 1960–1963 and was then at the Grand Théâtre de Genève in Geneva 1965–1973.

Between 1935 and 1937, and then again from 1951, Graf staged several times at the Salzburg Festival , including 1953 Don Giovanni in the set design by Clemens Holzmeister , conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler , 1955 The Magic Flute in the set design by Oskar Kokoschka , conducted by Georg Solti and in 1968 Emilio de 'Cavalieri's Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo in the Felsenreitschule and the Kollegienkirche .

Little Hans

Sigmund Freud with Herbert (ca.1905)

Herbert Graf was - with the consent of his parents - as a little boy the subject of study ("the little Hans") of Sigmund Freud to research child sexuality (Freud's publication 1909).

Fonts (selection)

• The repertoire of the public opera and musical theater in Berlin since 1771 . Dünnebeil, Berlin 1934
• The Opera and its Future in America , 1941
• Opera for the People , 1951
  The German adaptation and new version by the author appeared as:
  From the world of opera . Atlantis, Zurich 1960.
• Producing Opera for America , 1961

literature

• Susanne Blumesberger, Michael Doppelhofer, Gabriele Mauthe: Handbook of Austrian authors of Jewish origin from the 18th to the 20th century . Volume 1: A-I. Edited by the Austrian National Library. Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-11545-8 , p. 453.
• Peter Cahn: The Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt am Main (1878-1978) , Frankfurt am Main: Kramer, 1979.
• Alain Perroux: Herbert Graf . In: Andreas Kotte (Ed.): Theater Lexikon der Schweiz - Dictionnaire du théâtre en Suisse. Volume 1, Chronos, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-0340-0715-9 , p. 742. (French)
• Graf, Herbert. In: Elisabeth Roudinesco ; Michel Plon: Dictionary of Psychoanalysis: Names, Countries, Works, Terms . Translation from French. Vienna: Springer, 2004, ISBN 3-211-83748-5 , pp. 355–362

Web links

• Literature by and about Herbert Graf in the catalog of the German National Library
• Herbert Graf (director) in the Lexicon of Persecuted Musicians of the Nazi Era (LexM)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sigmund Freud: Analysis of the phobia of a five-year-old boy. (Little Hans). Yearbook of Psychoanalytic and Psychopathological Research. (1909) Vol. 1, Issue 1, 1-109; Collected works, Fischer-Verlag, Vol. VII, pages 243-377