Max Alvary
Max Alvary , real name Maximilian Achenbach (born May 3, 1851 in Düsseldorf ; † November 7, 1898 in Tabarz ), was a German architect and opera singer (tenor).
Life
Max Alvary, son of the Düsseldorf landscape painter Andreas Achenbach , went to the school of the Jesuit priests in Vaugirard near Paris , where his extraordinarily full-sounding voice was soon to be noticed in the boys' choir. He later received further training at a boarding school near London. His talent for drawing, inherited from his father, made the profession of architect appear promising. Maximilian Achenbach studied architecture at the Aachen Polytechnic and was one of the founding members of Corps Teutonia in 1871 . His studies were briefly interrupted by military service until he was deputy sergeant in the Düsseldorf Hussars .
After completing his studies, he settled in Düsseldorf as an architect in 1874, where he independently built several villas on the Rhine. However, he broke off his career as an architect and, against the initial resistance of his father, studied singing in Milan with Francesco Lamperti and in Frankfurt with Julius Stockhausen .
At the age of 22, Achenbach got engaged to 15-year-old Thekla Thomas from Frankfurt, whom he had met in Düsseldorf. In 1879 they married against the express will of both families. The marriage remained without offspring. In order to earn his own money, he was given the opportunity for a first performance after an audition at the Hofbühne in Weimar . The young tenor learned the part of Alessandro Stradella from Friedrich von Flotow by heart within eight days. On his debut, he initially called himself Max Anders, in order not to endanger his father's good name in the event of a failure. But he was successful and was engaged after the test appearance on the Weimar stage. The father was bitterly offended and broke off contact with his son, who was now an opera singer.
A career as a stage artist under his maiden name Maximilian Achenbach was no longer conceivable. The rising tenor chose the stage name Max Alvary . During his time in Weimar he took on an abundance of roles, mainly in the lyrical repertoire, such as Tamino in “Die Zauberflöte”, Ferrando in “Cosi fan tutte” and Don José in “Carmen”.
After auditioning for a theater agent, Max Alvary was offered an engagement at the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1885 at the age of only 29 . On November 25, 1885, Max Alvary made his New York debut in the role of Don José in "Carmen". After a repetition followed an appearance as Assad in the opera "The Queen of Saba" by Karl Goldmark at the side of the opera singer Lilli Lehmann , who took part in the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876. In January 1886, Max Alvary was given the title role in “Faust” by Gounod, and during a guest performance in Chicago Max Alvary was allowed to sing the Wagner part of Lohengrin for the first time . The Florestan in Beethoven's “Fidelio” expanded his repertoire. There was also Stolzing in Richard Wagner's opera “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” in New York. On January 13, 1888, his 100th performance of Wagner's Siegfried took place in the sold-out Metropolitan Opera House in New York City in front of 3500 spectators. Overnight, Max Alvary became the star and darling of New York audiences. In the spring of 1889, after almost four years, he left the United States.
Alvary had a fine dramatic voice and an exceptional stage charisma. Equipped with this, he rose in Germany in a short time to one of the most important tenors in Wagner operas, especially in Tristan and Siegfried. In his performances, contrary to the customs of the time, he did not wear a full beard and in his Siegfried performances he did not wear flesh-colored trousers, but showed his bare legs under the bearskin skirt, the calves spanned by the braided strings of the leather sandals which led to a dispute with Cosima Wagner in Bayreuth. For her as an actor he was too headstrong, too independent, and above all too little influenced.
In Hamburg he sang Siegfried and Stolzing, followed by appearances as Tannhäuser, and in 1890, at the age of 34, he was celebrated in Munich as Lohengrin and Jung-Siegfried. The critic Alfred von Mensi-Klarbach wrote about Alvary's guest performances in Munich: “A young German singer came from America and sang his young Siegfried beardless, in a carefully rehearsed mask, with youthful elasticity and enthusiasm - and Munich was - 'gone'. That means primarily the youth of both sexes. Max Alvary was on the scene an apparition of often ideal beauty. He designed his costumes and props himself and had them made. [...]. "
He reached the climax of his career as Tristan and Siegfried in Covent Garden in London in 1892.
In October 1894, while rehearsing for Wagner's Siegfried in Mannheim, he suffered a serious stage accident when he fell into oblivion and from which he never fully recovered despite several operations. Litigation dragged on for years and was not resolved until after Alvary's death. The family was awarded a compensation of 18,000 gold marks.
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In early 1894, Alvary resumed his stage work after a long recovery period. In Hamburg he sang Tristan under Gustav Mahler's direction and made guest appearances in the Ring in London again. In Düsseldorf, it was the first time that Max Alvari Alvary appeared in his hometown, he sang the “Pylades” in Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride and his father Andreas Achenbach gave his son an oil sketch of this performance as an artistic gift. With this, his father Andreas Achenbach also recognized the great artistic achievement of his son. Max Alvary returned to New York two more times. In 1895 he appeared in his well-known roles in New York and took part in a tour lasting several weeks. Alvary still suffered from the consequences of the stage accident and had to undergo further operations and restricted his performances more and more. In 1896 he took part in the Dutch premiere of "Tristan" in Amsterdam. On May 25, 1896, when he was only 40 years old, he ended his career in Hamburg as Siegfried in the “Götterdämmerung”.
Max Alvary died on November 7, 1898, almost five years after his accident on the stage. After his death he was buried in the Ohlsdorf cemetery , grave complex G10 (74–76) in Hamburg.
In the town of Großtabarz in Thuringia, Alvary had a house built for himself, his wife and nine children, on an actually unsalable property belonging to the Duke of Coburg and Gotha . In order to get the property, he had sung twice for free in Gotha. The house remained in the family until 1913. The path in front of it was named "Max-Alvary-Strasse".
Honors
- A street in Tabarz was named after Max Alvary.
- In Americanópolis, a district of Sao Paulo , he gave the name to Rua Max Alvary.
literature
- Ludwig Eisenberg : Large biographical lexicon of the German stage in the XIX. Century . Verlag von Paul List , Leipzig 1903, p. 24 f., ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
- Alfred von Mensi-Klarbach: Old Munich theater memories. 24 portraits from the heyday of the Munich court stages. Knorr & Hirt, Munich, 1923
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ In the secondary literature there are different years of birth, namely 1856 and 1858. Both the Corps list of the Corps Teutonia-Hercynia Braunschweig and the FamilySearch database show the correct year of birth 1851. Otherwise he would have had to start studying architecture in Aachen at the age of 15 or 13, which can be ruled out.
- ↑ Maximilian Achenbach at FamilySearch
- ↑ Bernd-A. Kahe, Alfred Priemeier, Ernst Battmer, Nils Höpken: Corps lists of the Braunschweig Seniors' Convent in the WSC, Teutonia, No. 3. Braunschweig 1990.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Alvary, Max |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Achenbach, Maximilian (real name); Anders, Max (pseudonym) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German architect and opera singer (tenor) |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 3, 1851 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Dusseldorf |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 7, 1898 |
| Place of death | Tabarz / Thuringian Forest |