Volker Horn

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Volker Horn (born March 13, 1943 in Klagenfurt , Carinthia ; † November 20, 2009 ) was an Austrian opera singer with a tenor voice .

Life

Horn grew up in Bayreuth . He became a member of the Regensburger Domspatzen and sang there as a boy soprano . 1954–1955 he appeared at the Bayreuth Festival as a shepherd boy in Tannhäuser in a production by Wieland Wagner . Wieland Wagner himself engaged Horn after the performance of the song “Fliege, kleine Käfer” by Engelbert Humperdinck , after many soloists, a. a. the St. Thomas Choir , the Dresden Kreuzchor and the Vienna Boys' Choir had sung unsuccessfully. 1969–1975 Horn sang in the Bayreuth Festival choir.

He received his first singing lessons from his father. He then studied singing and violin at the Vienna University of Music, among others in Erik Werba's class for song and oratorio . In 1976 Horn became a permanent member of the ensemble at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin , of which he was a member until his official retirement at the end of the 2007/08 season. After that he stayed connected to his former parent company with a guest contract. At the Deutsche Oper, however, the horn was mostly only used in medium and small parts. There he sang numerous so-called "Wurzen" roles, such as messengers, heralds and servants. His Comprimario roles there included: First Armored Man in Die Zauberflöte , Normanno in Lucia di Lammermoor , Abdallo in Nabucco , Malcolm in Macbeth , Yamadori in Madama Butterfly and Balthasar Zorn in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg . In July 2000 he sang the title role of Odysseus in the opera Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria by Claudio Monteverdi in Görlitzer Park in Berlin-Kreuzberg as part of the Berlin Summer Opera . He also regularly sang Siegfried Wälse in the music production of Klein-Siegfried , a version of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen for children at the Deutsche Oper .

In 1980 Horn appeared again at the Bayreuth Festival, this time as the first knight of the grail in Parsifal and as the first noble in Lohengrin . During the summer months of 1981 and 1982 at the Eutin Festival , he sang the role of Max in the opera Der Freischütz ; he sang the part "vocally at an astonishingly high level" and showed an "impressive legato culture". In July 1982 he also took on the role of 1st armored man in a new production of Mozart's opera The Magic Flute . In August 1989 he sang the “sympathetic” Adam in the operetta The Bird Dealer at the Baden Operetta Summer “with a somewhat coarse-grained tenor” .

Horn had great success in his numerous engagements in Germany and in other European countries, in which he was engaged almost exclusively for leading roles. Horn gave guest appearances at the Staatstheater Karlsruhe (as Max), at the Staatstheater Braunschweig (also as Max), at the Zurich Opera House (as Froh), at the Lyon Opera (1981 as Loge), at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice (February 1982 as Parsifal , alternating with Peter Hofmann ), at the Teatro Massimo Bellini in Catania (January 1991 as Mayor in the Strauss Opera Peace Day , December 1992 as the helmsman in the Dutch version), at the Teatro Regio in Turin (as a box), at the Flemish Opera in Antwerp (as Florestan), at the Prague State Opera (as Lohengrin), at the Brno Opera House / National Theater (1993 as Erik in Der Fliegende Holländer ) and at the State Opera in Wroclaw (2002 as Max). In May 1989 he sang the part of the Third Squire at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice in a concert performance of Parsifal under the musical direction of Giuseppe Sinopoli . During the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago , he sang the role of Narraboth in Salome in the summer of 1989 . In the 1990/91 season he took on the role of Max in a tour production (including in May 1991 in Nijmegen ) of the opera Der Freischütz at the Opera Forum in Enschede . In the 1992/93 season he sang the hero tenor role of privy councilor and court clerk Asmus Modiger in Hans Pfitzner's opera Das Herz (premiere: April 1993) at the Rudolstadt Theater . In the same season he also took on Max, who impressed with the “flawless clarity of his presentation” and “made his role a great experience”, in a new production of the opera Der Freischütz (premiere: February 1993) at the Rudolstadt Theater .

He also appeared in several opera premieres, including 1984 at the Schwetzingen Festival in Ophelia by Rudolf Kelterborn and in 1996 at the Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern in Gesualdo by Franz Hummel .

Horn campaigned intensively for the operatic works of Siegfried Wagner . In 1992 and 1993 he sang Hans Kraft in Der Bärenhäuter at the festival in Rudolstadt, "with heroic potential that already made a Lohengrin and young Tannhauser heard" . 1995 followed there the role of Wittich in Banadietrich . In 1999 he was the helper of Lahngau in the opera Sternengebot at the music festival in Weikersheim . In October 2001 he took over the Philo in Cologne in the concert premiere of Siegfried Wagner's opera Die heilige Linde . In 2004 he sang Waidewut in Der Heidekönig in Solingen and most recently in 2005 at the Stadttheater Fürth as Friedrich in the opera Der Kobold . Horn worked with director Peter P. Pachl on all productions .

Horn has also performed successfully as a concert singer and as a soloist in oratorios in Germany , Austria and Switzerland . In October 1984 he sang the tenor solo in the " Missa solemnis " by Ludwig van Beethoven in performances with the Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich and the Wiener Singverein under the direction of Miltiades Caridis in the Great Hall of the Vienna Musikverein and in the Great Festival Hall in Salzburg . In February 1988, despite indisposition due to illness, he sang the tenor part of Aron in the largely “unknown” oratorio “Moses” by Max Bruch in Berlin in a concert with the Berliner Symphoniker .

Horn was married and the father of four children. He died of a brain tumor after a long and serious illness . Horn was buried on December 5, 2009 in the Wilhelmshorst cemetery.

voice

Horn sang both the parts of the lyric tenor ( Tamino , Froh ), but took on the role of the youthful-dramatic hero tenor in his international engagements . Horn was an "intermediate subject tenor with considerable heroic resources, who also remained committed to legato singing with Wagner and always stood out for its flawless text intelligibility."

The voice of Horn has been documented on some sound documents that have since been published on CD. In a recording of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera Die Zauberflöte he sang the First Armored Man under Herbert von Karajan ; von Karajan hired Horn for this role on the recommendation of the singer Victor von Halem . He recorded Abdallo with Giuseppe Sinopoli . Horn's tenor roles in Siegfried Wagner's operas were also documented through live recordings and some of them were also made available on DVD. Horn also appeared in the ZDF quiz show Do you recognize the melody? as a soloist.

Others

Volker Horn was a chamber singer . Since his studies in 1962 he was a member of the Catholic-Austrian student association “Aargau” Vienna and other ÖCV and CV associations .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Volker Horn . Vita on the homepage of the Bayreuth Festival
  2. ↑ Volker Horn . Vita on the homepage of the Deutsche Oper Berlin (accessed on February 2, 2010)
  3. ↑ Dilek Güngör: The water for Odysseus comes from the fire hose. In: Berliner Zeitung . July 6, 2000, accessed June 8, 2015 .
  4. ^ The Domspatz at the Deutsche Oper . Obituary. In: Berliner Zeitung from December 1, 2009
  5. ↑ 1876 ​​BAYREUTH 1991 . Chronicle of the Bayreuth Festival, editor: Peter Emmerich.
  6. ↑ Michael Arndt: EUTINER SOMMERSPIELE 1981 . Performance review. In: Orpheus . Issue 9/10. September / October 1981. Page 713/714.
  7. ↑ MICHAEL BLEES: SUMMER OF THE OPERETS: HEAT TO VERY CLOUDY . Performance review. In: Orpheus . Issue December 12, 1989. Page 960/961.
  8. ↑ Ingeborg Kalkus: WEBER HISTORISCH . Performance review. In: Orpheus . Issue May 5, 1993. Page 47.
  9. ↑ Stefan Lauter: "IT DOES NOT EXCLUDE THE ONE AND THE OTHER!" . Performance review. In: Orpheus . Edition 12/13. December 1992. Pages 48/49.
  10. ↑ Late tribute to a tragic figure in music history . Critique of the CD release (live recording), Online Musik Magazin, 2001
  11. ↑ Concerts in the 1984–1985 season ( Memento of the original from June 9, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Archive on the homepage of the Wiener Singverein @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.singverein.at
  12. ↑ GH (= Geerd Heinsen): LOUD VIOLENCE . Concert review. In: Orpheus . Issue April 4, 1988. Page 276/277.
  13. ↑ Obituary notice. In: Berliner Tagesspiegel. Archived from the original on July 18, 2012 ; accessed on June 8, 2015 .
  14. ↑ On the death of Volker Horn . Obituary at Stage Door on January 22nd, 2010
personal data
SURNAME Horn, Volker
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian opera singer and tenor
DATE OF BIRTH March 13, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Klagenfurt , Carinthia
DATE OF DEATH November 20, 2009