Joseph August Röckel

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Joseph August Röckel , also Josef August Roeckel , (born August 28, 1783 in Neunburg vorm Wald , † September 19, 1870 in Köthen ) was a German opera singer ( tenor ) and theater principal. He was the brother of the singer Elisabeth Röckel , who married the composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel in 1813 .

Life

Röckel studied in Munich jurisprudence and was private secretary 1803/04 at the Bavarian envoy in Salzburg . There he was discovered by a Viennese theater director who engaged him as the first tenor at the Theater an der Wien in 1804 . Together with his sister, he was given an official apartment there. He was best known in the role of Florestan, which he played at the premiere of the second version of Beethoven's opera Fidelio (1806). The opera had two performances in this version, on March 29 and April 10, 1806. He also earned merit in the preparation of the great concert at which Beethoven premiered several works on December 22, 1808 in the Theater an der Wien, the 5th symphony , the 6th symphony , the 4th piano concerto and the choral fantasy . As a thank you, Beethoven gave him an English lexicon.

Röckel later reported several times about his encounters with the composer, for example to Ferdinand Ries , Anton Schindler and Rudolph Bunge .

In September 1810 he went to the theater in Bamberg with his sister , returned to Vienna in 1811 and worked there at the Kärntnertor Theater until spring 1813 . On April 6, 1813, Beethoven wrote to Joseph von Varena in Graz , recommending “Mr. Röckel and his sister, whose musical talents deserve to be known from them ”. In fact, Röckel got an engagement at the local theater and made his debut on May 15, 1813 in the Singspiel Die Schweizer Familie . In 1814 his son August Röckel was born in Graz. He then worked for a short time in Mannheim and made his debut on August 26, 1816 in Trier , where he - together with his wife Caroline Röckel, nee. Heyer - was employed until August 17, 1817.

From September 1822 to 1828 he lived again in Vienna, interrupted by a brief engagement in Agram in autumn 1825. He appeared at the Kärntnertor Theater and also worked as a copyist. He also worked as a singing teacher at the Vienna Court Opera from 1822 to 1827, where he taught Henriette Sontag . From 1828 to 1829/30 he was theater director at the Theater Aachen , from 1830/31 to 1832 he stayed in Paris and then until 1846 in London . From 1846 to 1853 he was director of a music school in York , around 1860/61 he lived with his son Eduard in Bath , where he met the Beethoven biographer Alexander Wheelock Thayer , who asked him in particular about Beethoven's Fidelio . He spent the last years of his life in Koethen.

Röckel left a diary consisting of 13 volumes that he kept from 1815 to 1857. The original is in the possession of the Goethe Museum in Düsseldorf .

family

Röckel was married twice:

  • His first wife was the actress Caroline Heyer (born March 1, 1790 in Mannheim ; † September 9, 1824 in Vienna), who died of nerve fever at the age of 34 in the shared apartment on Wieden No. 177.
  • On October 8, 1827, he married the soprano Anna Uëtz (born May 25, 1802 in Vienna; † November 13, 1872 in Köthen) in the Laimgrubenkirche in Vienna  . She made her debut in 1821 at the Theater an der Wien, worked in Agram from 1822/23 , in Graz from 1823 to 1826 and at the Vienna Court Opera in 1826/27. After marrying Joseph August Röckel, she went to Aachen with him in 1829. Due to an illness, she only appeared in her husband's opera productions as a chorister and in small roles.

From the two marriages, Röckel had three sons:

literature

  • KJ Kutsch , Leo Riemens : Large singer lexicon . Unchanged edition. KG Saur, Bern, 1993, second volume M – Z, Sp. 2487, ISBN 3-907820-70-3
  • Anton Schindler: Biography of Ludwig van Beethoven , 3rd, revised and enlarged edition, Münster 1860, Volume 1, p. 120
  • Catalog of the portrait collection of the kuk General-Intendanz of the kk Hoftheater. At the same time a biographical guide in the field of theater and music. Second division. Group IV. Wiener Hoftheater , Vienna 1892, p. 349
  • Klaus Schulte and Peter Sardoc: From Ringelhardt to Mundorf , artists and personalities of the Aachen City Theater , Aachen: Verlag Josef Stippak 1977
  • Michael Jahn : The Vienna Court Opera from 1810 to 1836. The Kärnthnerthortheater as a court opera , Vienna 2007
  • Klaus Martin Kopitz , Rainer Cadenbach (Eds.) A. a .: Beethoven from the point of view of his contemporaries in diaries, letters, poems and memories. Volume 2: Lachner - Zmeskall. Edited by the Beethoven Research Center at the Berlin University of the Arts. Henle, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-87328-120-2 , pp. 723-728.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kopitz (2015), p. 52
  2. ^ Ludwig van Beethoven, Correspondence. Complete edition , Volume 2, ed. by Sieghard Brandenburg , Munich 1996, No. 347 and 348
  3. ↑ Rudolph Bunge, Fidelio. According to personal communications from Professor Joseph Röckel. In: Die Gartenlaube , Vol. 16, No. 38/1868, pp. 601–606 (Wikisource: s: Page: Die Gartenlaube (1868) 601.jpg ff.)
  4. ↑ Ludwig van Beethoven, Letters. Complete edition , Volume 2, ed. by Sieghard Brandenburg , Munich 1996, No. 632
  5. ^ Wiener Theater-Zeitung , Vol. 6, No. 58 of May 15, 1813, pp. 228–230 ( digitized version )
  6. ↑ Gustav Bereths, music chronicle of Trier (1800-1850), Part II, The Music Theater , Mainz 1983, pp 88-101
  7. ↑ Inge Kähmer and Jörn Göres, Goethe Museum Düsseldorf Anton and Katharina Kippenberg Foundation. Catalog of music , Bonn: Bouvier 1987, p. 497
  8. ↑ See Wiener Zeitung , No. 212 of September 15, 1824, p. 887 ( digitized version )
personal data
SURNAME Röckel, Joseph August
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Roeckel, Josef August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German opera singer (tenor) and theater principal
DATE OF BIRTH August 28, 1783
PLACE OF BIRTH Neunburg vorm Wald
DATE OF DEATH September 19, 1870
Place of death Koethen