Johannes Elmblad

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Johannes Elmblad
Atelier Dahlöf, Stockholm 1897

Johannes Elmblad ( May 29, 1853 in Kärda socken - December 4, 1910 in Växjö ) was a Swedish opera singer with a bass voice , director and opera director. He sang on numerous German stages, at the Vienna Court Opera , at the Bayreuth Festival , in Milan and New York.

In the season 1897/98 he was director of the Royal Opera in Stockholm.

Life, work

He was the son of Per Magnus Elmblad (1806-1887), a theology professor. His mother was the godchild of the singer Jenny Lind . He had a brother named Magnus five years his senior. He studied at the Royal Conservatory in Stockholm. His teachers included Fritz Arlberg (1830–1896) and Julius Günther (1818–1904) as well as Julius Stockhausen and Pauline Viardot-García abroad . He began his career as a concert singer and toured Europe and Australia. In 1876 he took on the role of Donner in a single Rheingold reprise at the Bayreuth Festival .

A first permanent engagement led him to the Dresden Court Opera in 1879 or 1880 . After that he was engaged for three seasons in Hanover and at the Deutsches Theater in Prague. The 1887-88 season took him to the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where he made his debut as Veit Pogner. During this season he sang in New York in Weber's Euryanthe and in the first performance of Spontini's Fernand Cortez . Johannes Elmblad became a popular Wagner singer: between 1896 and 1904 he made six guest appearances in Bayreuth, always as Fafner in Rheingold and Siegfried , and in 1896 in Cosima Wagner's new production of the Ring of the Nibelung as Hagen in the Götterdämmerung . He sang Daland, Hunding, König Marke and Veit Pogner on other stages with great success. He was versatile, excelled in the comic field as Falstaff in the Lustige Weibern von Windsor , sang a number of French operas, for example Cardinal Brogni and Marcel in the Huguenots , and also took on very low roles, such as Osmin or Sarastro. His repertoire included more than seventy roles. Kutsch / Riemens praised "the vocal power and the fullness of his bass voice", which was "impressively supported by the gigantic singer's talent for acting".

Sigrid Elmblad, around 1910

After his engagement in New York, Elmblad was engaged for two seasons each at the Berlin Court Opera and again at the Deutsches Theater in Prague. At the same time an intensive guest performance began, 1889–90 at Mariinsky and Bolshoi , the opera houses of St. Petersburg and Moscow, in 1893 at the Vienna Court Opera , regularly in Stockholm. From 1894 to 1897 he was engaged at the Wroclaw Opera House, followed by a few years at the Royal Opera in Stockholm. In Sweden he increasingly took on directing duties, briefly he was also director of the Royal Opera. In 1902 he was called to New York again, from 1903 he was engaged in Amsterdam, Berlin, Leipzig and Wiesbaden.

His first wife died in 1887. The following year he married Sigrid Agneta Sofia, née Petterson (1860–1926), who worked as a writer. She published - initially under the pseudonym Toivo - short stories, poems and the novels Mot sin lycka (1897) and Fru grefvinnan (1902). The couple had two daughters.

Role Directory

World premieres

  • Valdemarsskatten by Andreas Hallén , April 8, 1899, Stockholm (as Clemens)
  • Tirfing by Wilhelm Stenhammar , December 9, 1899, Stockholm, conducted by the composer (as Angantyr)

Repertoire (selection)

Beethoven :

Flotow :

  • Lord Tristan Mickleford in Martha

Halévy :

Meyerbeer :

Mozart :

Nessler :

Nicolai :

 

Rossini :

Giuseppe Verdi :

Richard Wagner :

Weber :

Scenes

  • Valdemarsskatten ,
    Stockholm 1899
    (right as messenger)

  • Das Rheingold ,
    Stockholm 1901
    (right as Fafner)

Award

literature

References and comments

  1. ^ Kutsch / Riemens: Großes Sängerlexikon , Volume 4, Walter de Gruyter 2012, p. 1322
  2. ↑ Riksarkivet: Sigrid Agneta Sofia Elmblad , accessed on August 8, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Elmblad, Johannes
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish opera singer with a bass voice, opera director and opera director
DATE OF BIRTH May 29, 1853
PLACE OF BIRTH Kärda socks
DATE OF DEATH 4th December 1910
Place of death Vaxjo