Theodor Wachtel (singer, 1823)

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Theodor Wachtel portrait (11063881276) .jpg

Theodor Wachtel (born March 10, 1823 in Hamburg , † November 14, 1893 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German singer ( tenor ).

Life

Wachtel, born the son of a cab owner, worked as a driver himself after his father's death until his voice, an extraordinarily beautiful and powerful lyrical tenor of great scope, was discovered.

His first teacher was Julie Grandjean in Hamburg. The twenty-six year old made his first attempt on the stage at the municipal theater in his native city; shortly before that, on March 1, 1849, he had already known how to draw general attention to himself in a concert he organized himself, in which his compatriot Johannes Brahms also took part.

As a beginner, he worked at the court theater in Schwerin for a year, then turned to Würzburg, where he was encouraged by the lessons of Kapellmeister Witt and the singer Frieda Beck-Weichselbaum . In 1852 he followed a call to the Darmstadt court theater . Here he sang a. a. Walther at the first Tannhauser performance, and in 1853 the title role in Lonjumeau's Postillon , in which he later had the greatest success. From 1854 to 1858 he worked in Hanover, then in Kassel, and was a member of the Vienna Court Opera from 1863 to 1865. Guest performances took him to all major opera stages in Germany, and from 1862 to 1868 every year for several months in London, where he sang on the Italian stage of the Coventgardentheater, further to Paris in 1869, to America in 1871 and 1878.

He has not taken a permanent stage position since the end of the 1960s. He first chose his retirement home in Wiesbaden, later after several years in Berlin in Frankfurt am Main, where he died on November 14, 1893. He gave his last concert in Berlin on March 8, 1893.

Besides the postilion, which he played over 1000 times, his best roles were: "George Brown", "Sever", "Lyonel", "Vasco de Gama".

Wachtel's musical education has always remained low, the better was the purely technical training of his voice, which enabled him to appear at a charity concert in front of the Berlin audience on the eve of his seventieth birthday; the splendor of the splendid organ was almost completely intact. In terms of acting and the intellectual penetration of his roles, Wachtel fell short of even modest standards in all cases.

He was made an honorary member of the Schwerin and Coburg court theaters.

His sons August , Friedrich and Theodor Wachtel were also singers.

literature

  • On quail cf. Hermann Knispel, The Grand Duke. Darmstadt Court Theater . In: Yearbooks of the theaters in Hamburg, Schwerin, Würzburg, Hanover, Kassel, Vienna . New theater almanac 1895, p. 425
  • Ludwig Eisenberg : Quail, Theodor . In: Large biographical lexicon of the German stage in the XIX. Century. Paul List, Leipzig 1903, p. 1076 ( daten.digitale-sammlungen.de ).
  • Max Friedlaender:  Wachtel, Theodor . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 40, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1896, p. 424 f.
  • Michael Jahn : The Vienna Court Opera from 1848 to 1870. Personnel - Performances - Schedule (= publications of the Institute for Austrian Music Documentation 27). Tutzing 2002, ISBN 3-7952-1075-5

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Text based on Max Friedländer (ADB)