Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Unzelmann

Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Unzelmann (born July 1, 1753 in Braunschweig , † April 21, 1832 in Berlin ) was a German theater actor, director, opera singer (tenor) and comedian.

Life

Already at the age of fourteen Unzelmann joined a traveling theater group in Schwerin . He was engaged there until 1774 and performed mainly in Güstrow . In the same year he switched to Karl Theophil Döbbelin and his ensemble and made guest appearances in Berlin , Dresden and Leipzig .

Unzelmann was not only successful as an actor, but also as a singer and dancer. From 1781 he made a guest appearance in Hamburg , and after a much-noticed guest performance in Berlin, he went to Gustav Friedrich Großmann and his ensemble in Frankfurt am Main in 1784 . Since 1788 he was a member of the ensemble of the Royal National Theater Berlin (from 1811 Royal Drama). Under August Wilhelm Iffland's direction, he was one of the most important actors in the house, where he received the maximum salary of 1,560 Reichstalers since 1801. At the National Theater he had his greatest successes with works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart . But he was also successful in plays by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing , Friedrich Schiller , Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Shakespeare . Unzelmann is particularly brilliant in comic roles. He played the mayor Staar in August von Kotzebue's comedy Die deutscher Kleinstädter (premiere April 28, 1802). In Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Don Juan ( Don Giovanni ) he sang the leporello until 1810. In Ferdinando Paër's comic singspiel The Merry Shoemaker , he sang the leading role of the shoemaker Sebastian Brandel (premiere May 25, 1807) 23 times.

From 1785 to 1803 he was married to the actress Friederike Flittner . The later xylograph Friedrich Unzelmann and the actor Karl Wolfgang Unzelmann were their sons together.

Between 1814 and 1823 he worked in Berlin as a director of plays, but he also directed comedies during this time.

Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Unzelmann died on April 21, 1832 in Berlin at the age of 78.

literature

• Hermann Arthur Lier :  Unzelmann, Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 39, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1895, pp. 325-329.
• Karl-Josef Kutsch , Leo Riemens : Large singer lexicon . Unchanged edition. KG Saur, Bern, 1993, second volume M – Z, Sp. 3041 f., ISBN 3-907820-70-3

Web links

• Edited letters from and to Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Unzelmann in the web service correspSearch of the BBAW
• Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Unzelmann in the Portrait Index Early Modern Age