Nicolae Bretan
Nicolae Bretan (born March 25, 1887 in Naszód , Hungary , † December 1, 1968 in Cluj ) was a Romanian composer , opera singer ( baritone ), director and music writer.
Life
Nicolae Bretan was born as the son of a Romanian hotel manager in the then Hungarian Năsăud, grew up as a Romanian in Austria-Hungary and learned the Romanian, Hungarian and German languages in Transylvania . In this at least trilingual region, the name with which he signed changed from Nicolae to Miklós or even to Nikolaus. Bretan studied at the music academies in Vienna and Budapest . He began his singing career as a baritone in 1913 in Pozsony . He had engagements in Munich , Berlin and Oradea and sang a. a. the barbers of Rossini .
He was the creator of over two hundred songs . The setting was based on the language in which the poet wrote the poem. His favorite German-language poets were Nikolaus Lenau and Heinrich Heine , mainly Mihai Eminescu was the poet of his Romanian songs. The Mein Lieder-Land collection contains 90 Romanian, 70 Hungarian and 50 German songs; some of his religious songs have Latin texts.
His first opera, Luceafărul , premiered in Cluj in 1921, and in 1924 he wrote the Romanian libretto himself for the drama Gólem ember akar lenni (1922), a play on the golem theme by Illés Kaczér from 1922 . From Horia , 1935 also premiered in Cluj, had something of a Romanian National Opera can be, it is nevertheless of the Horea uprising in Transylvania against the Hungarian landlords in 1784, but even the Communists later ignored the opera.
From Transylvania , which has been Hungarian again since 1940 , the entire Jewish relatives of his Hungarian wife Nora Osvát were deported by the German Eichmann Command and his Hungarian helpers in 1944 and died in a concentration camp . After the Second World War, Bretan became opera director, but since he did not want to join the communist state party , he was dismissed in 1948, excluded from the composers' association and was largely banned from performing in Romania. Most recently, he composed a requiem in 1955 , in which he himself took over the baritone role at the premiere, after which he was unable to publish anything.
The Nicolae Bretan Music Foundation , established on the initiative of his daughter Judit, manages his estate. The operas and songs are u. a. Published by Nimbus Records .
Compositions (selection)
- Luceafărul , opera in one act based on the poem by Mihai Eminescu, WP: Cluj 1921. ("The Evening Star").
- Golem Lásadása , opera 1924, libretto and music by Bretan based on the drama Golem by Illés Kaczér
- Eroii de la Rovine , Opera 1935 (about the Battle of Rovine )
- Horia , Opera 1937, based on Ghiță Popp
- Arald , Opera 1939, based on Mihael Eminescu's "Die Geister". Premiere: 1982 in Iași
- A Különös Széder-est , opera in Hungarian 1945, premiered 1974. It deals with the Holocaust.
- Requiem , Mass 1955
- Songs for poems by Heinrich Heine, Nikolaus Lenau, Rainer Maria Rilke , Budapest: Editio Musica, 1990, score
Sound carrier (selection)
- Nicolae Bretan Sampler, operas, requiem & songs Nimbus Records 1998
- My lieder-land: The songs of Nicolae Bretan , Nimbus Records 2000 (recordings from 1973 to 1976)
literature
- Hartmut Gagelmann: Nicolae Bretan, his songs, his operas, his life , Klausenburg-Cluj, Romania: Tipoholding Verlag, 1998. English edition: Nicolae Bretan: His Life, His Music , Hillsdale, New York: Pendragon Press, 2000 1-57647 -021-0, partly on google books .
- Malcolm Hamrick Brown: Nicolae Bretan (1887-1968) , Bloomington: Indiana University, 1989, 8 p.
- Charles Wood: The One-Act Operas of Nicolae Bretan: Romania's Silenced Composer , Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2008 ISBN 978-3-639-08886-1 Book on demand
Web links
- Literature by and about Nicolae Bretan in the catalog of the German National Library
- Life and catalog raisonné on UCMR (Union of Romanian Composers and Musicologists)
- Nicolae Bretan at Operissimo on the basis of the Great Singer Lexicon
- Engelbert Hellen: Short bio Bretan Nicolae , at: Klassika
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bretan, Nicolae |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Romanian composer, opera singer (baritone), director and music writer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 25, 1887 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Naszód , Hungary |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1st December 1968 |
| Place of death | Cluj |