Otto Köhler (singer)
Otto Köhler (born June 25, 1903 in Neu-Isenburg ; † April 1, 1976 in Hanover ) was a German opera singer ( baritone ) and singing teacher .
Life
Like his cousin, the tenor Franz Völker , Otto Köhler first completed an apprenticeship at Disconto-Bank in Frankfurt am Main, where he then worked as a bank clerk. Like Franz Völker, he was also a member of the Frohsinn Choral Society, 1834 Neu-Isenburg, and also had singing lessons from Alexander Wellig-Bertram, who had also trained the baritone Heinrich Schlusnus . In 1928 Clemens Krauss engaged Otto Köhler as a lyrical baritone beginner at the Frankfurt Opera , where Köhler sang Silvio in Leoncavallo's Bajazzo .
In 1937 he was hired by the artistic director and general music director Rudolf Krasselt at the Hanover Opera House as the first lyrical baritone through the stations of the Opera House in Cologne under Eugen Szenkar , the Stadttheater in Ulm under Herbert von Karajan and Koblenz . He stayed loyal to this house and was a guest until 1969. From 1947 he taught at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media as a singing teacher until his death in 1976.
Act
Otto Köhler had a pleasantly sonorous, lyrical baritone voice, which with increasing age developed into a character baritone. His talent for playing and his wit made him the parade actor in Rossini's Figaro , a role he sang over 200 times and with which he made guest appearances in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Hamburg and Cologne. He also sang Papageno in Mozart's Magic Flute , and - with the exception of the hero baritone part - almost all baritone parts except Mozart's Don Giovanni and Count Almaviva in Mozart's opera Le nozze di Figaro . He was often able to escape these two roles, for which he seemed less suitable in terms of stature, by cunningly recommending his Berlin colleague Karl Schmitt-Walter as a guest for Don Giovanni or the Count . In return, he was only too happy to leave him the Rossini-Figaro in Berlin. At the age of 70 he sang Prince Ottokar in Carl Maria von Weber's Freischütz in Hanover .
Köhler worked as a singing teacher at the University of Music and Theater. He repeatedly refused to be given the title of "professor". He had learned his work attitude from Herbert von Karajan . Core sentences adopted from him, such as “I can't, don't exist! What you cannot do, you have to work for! ”Or“ What is the first duty of a teacher and leader? To make yourself superfluous! ”- determined the progress of his teaching activity. He gave his students the tools they need to be singing independently, so that when problems arise, they can always rely on the basic rules of what he has learned. He taught beginners seven days a week, only to reduce the frequency of his lessons to the mandatory number of lessons over time.
Köhler initiated and vocal support for seven singers with the title Kammersänger , the singers Joan Carroll, Ruth-Margret Pütz , Margarete Berg, Elisabeth Pack and the singers Gerd Nienstedt , Siegfried Haertel and Barr Peterson. The baritones Leonhard Delany, Tonio Larisch, Georg Schulz, Manfred Ball, Reinhard Braun and the tenors Horst Hoffmann and Joachim Siemann were also instructed in singing. Several later university professors received their vocal training from Otto Köhler: Manfred Ball, Günter Binge , Gerd Nienstedt, Friedrich-Wilhelm Tebbe and Michael Temme, as well as the concert and opera singers Christine Reil, Heike Henkel, Dieter Miserre and Ulf Kenklies .
Most of Otto Köhler's male pupils came out of the Hanover Boys Choir , whose male voices he was responsible for. Among them Gerry Schmidt, who later directed both the extra choir of the Hanover State Opera , and their children's choir. Otto Köhler designed the sound of the Hanoverian opera ensemble, the above-mentioned choirs under Gerry Schmidt, the Hanoverian boys' choir and the Schaumburg fairy tale singers through F.-W. Tebbe.
literature
- KJ Kutsch , Leo Riemens : Large Singer Lexicon , Verlag Francke, 1987, ISBN 3-317-01638-8
Web links
- Works by and about Otto Köhler in the catalog of the German National Library
- Otto Köhler at Operissimo on the basis of the Great Singer Lexicon
Individual evidence
- ^ Niensted, Gerd , in Dirk Böttcher : Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon (2002)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Koehler, Otto |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German opera singer (baritone) and singing teacher |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 25, 1903 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Neu-Isenburg |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 1, 1976 |
| Place of death | Hanover |