Joseph Lux (actor)

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Joseph Lux, dotted engraving by D. Helberg

Joseph Lux (born January 1757 in Glatz , Silesia , † May 9, 1818 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German actor and opera singer ( bass ) who appeared in comic roles in particular.

Life

Joseph Lux was first engaged in Johann Heinrich Böhm's traveling troop from 1783/84 . In 1786 he switched to Gustav Friedrich Großmann , who at that time had connected with the theater entrepreneur Christian Wilhelm Klos and played in the cities of Cologne , Düsseldorf and Bonn . The troupe's music director was August Burgmüller . The Bonn National Theater emerged from the important ensemble that last played in Aachen. Elector Maximilian Franz subsidized it with 15,000 Reichstalers annually and opened it on January 3, 1789. Lux soon assumed a central position here. On October 2, 1789, he was also employed as a court musician. For a time, until February 1790, Heinrich Vohs also belonged to the Bonn theater .

Lux came into close contact with the young Ludwig van Beethoven through his work and accompanied him and the other members of the court orchestra on the memorable trip that the court undertook in September and October 1791 to Mergentheim . Beethoven's childhood friend Franz Gerhard Wegeler reports:

“Incidentally, this trip, which the whole orchestra made in two yachts up the Rhine and Main rivers in the most beautiful season, had become a fertile source of the most beautiful pictures in Beethoven's memory. In the roles played by the singer and well-known comedian Lux, who was elected the great king, Beethoven and Bernhard Romberg were appointed kitchen boys and put into service as such. The diploma of his further promotion, which Beethoven received, dates: at the height of Rüdisheim , one will probably have found in his estate; at least I saw it in his safe custody in 1796. A large seal, imprinted in pitch in the lid of a box, fastened by a few severed threads of a ship's rope, gave this diploma an honorable reputation. "

Beethoven probably composed the two comic arias for bass and orchestra from 1790 for Lux , prüfung des Küssens WoO 89 and Mit Mädeln sich Mutually WoO 90.

On July 7, 1792, Lux made his debut in Frankfurt am Main, where Goethe heard him . He characterized him as a “compact, well-educated middle figure” and an actor who “knows how to motivate his clothes and gestures according to the roles”. Lux soon became one of the most popular actors in Frankfurt, as reported in a report from Frankfurt:

"Mr. Lux deserved to be one of the first to be noticed when I wrote about the local theater in general. But since his main merit consists in his excellent, true, genuinely funny game, I can only touch him briefly here. It is certain, however, that I have never seen so many original moods within the limits of nature and decency as with him. His Kapellmeister in the Korsar , Rinnfeld in the improved obstinacy , and Felt in the Knicker , are masterpieces of comical representation. "

Lux remained connected to the Frankfurt stage until his death.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Adolf Sandberger , Zur Reise nach Mergentheim and Aschaffenburg , in: ders., Selected essays on the history of music , Volume 2, Munich 1924, pp. 131-134
  2. ^ Franz Gerhard Wegeler and Ferdinand Ries , Biographical Notes on Ludwig van Beethoven , Koblenz 1838, p. 17f.
  3. ↑ "About the state of music in Frankfurt am Mayn", in: Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung , vol. 2, no. 3 of October 16, 1799, column 45f.
personal data
SURNAME Lux, Joseph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actor and opera singer (bass)
DATE OF BIRTH January 1757
PLACE OF BIRTH Glatz , Silesia
DATE OF DEATH May 9, 1818
Place of death Frankfurt am Main