Wilhelm Fassbinder (singer)

Wilhelm Fassbinder (born October 30, 1887 in Cologne , † March 5, 1946 in Göttingen ) was a German opera singer ( bass baritone ).

Life

The son of the Cologne sculptor Wilhelm Fassbinder and his wife Gertrud geb. Hinsen studied singing with Prof. Schulz-Dornburg and chamber singer Karl Scheidemantel .

His stage career began in 1913 with an engagement at the Opera House in Cologne , but in 1914 he was drafted into military service in the First World War. In 1915 he was able to resume his stage work at the court theater of Altenburg in Thuringia, where he appeared until 1918. In 1920 he was appointed to the Stuttgart Opera House , of which he remained a member for ten years, and which in 1925 awarded him the title of Kammersänger. Here he played roles such as Hans Heiling by H. Marschner, the Flying Dutchman , Hans Sachs in the Meistersingers , the Borromeo in Palestrina by Hans Pfitzner, the weapon master in Die Rose vom Liebesgarten by the same composer and the Iago in Verdi's Othello . 1930–32 he sang at the Stadttheater Halle / Saale , 1932–34 at the Stadttheater Göttingen , 1935–40 he was engaged at the Berlin Volksoper , where he now appeared in buffalo parts and worked as a director. In the years 1941-44 he only worked there as a director. Guest performances have taken him to the big German theaters, but also abroad. He sang in 1926 at the Covent Garden Opera London to Telramund in Lohengrin and Wotan in Die Walküre, 1930 in performances of the Nibelung ring . Most recently he worked as a singing teacher in Göttingen, where he died of a weak heart in 1946.

He was married several times, from 1921 to 1934 with the actress Erna Fassbinder geb. Rieth, with whom he had three daughters.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Baden-Württemberg State Archives
2. ↑ Karl-Josef Kutsch, Leo Riemens (ed.): Large singer lexicon . tape 4 .