Hermann Prey was a German lyric
baritoneBaritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...
. He is most famous for
lieder and for light comic baritone roles in opera.
Biography
Hermann Prey was born in Berlin and grew up in Germany. He was scheduled to be drafted when World War II ended. He studied voice at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin and won the prize of the Frankfurt contest of the Hessischer Rundfunk in 1952.
He began to sing in song recitals and made his operatic debut the next year in
WiesbadenThe Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden is the State Theatre of the German state Hesse in the capital Wiesbaden, producing operas, plays, ballets, musicals and concerts on four stages. It is also known as Staatstheater Wiesbaden or Theater Wiesbaden...
. He joined the Staatsoper, where he sang until 1960. During his last years in Hamburg, he also made frequent guest appearances elsewhere, including the
Salzburg FestivalThe Salzburg Festival is a prominent festival of music and drama established in 1920. It is held each summer within the Austrian town of Salzburg, the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart...
.
He sang frequently at the
Metropolitan OperaThe Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
between 1960 and 1970 and made his
BayreuthThe or Bayreuth Festival Theatre is an opera house north of Bayreuth, Germany, dedicated solely to the performance of operas by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner...
debut in 1965. Although he often sang
VerdiGiuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
early in his career, he later concentrated more on
MozartWolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
and
Richard StraussRichard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
. Prey was well known for playing Figaro (Mozart and Rossini), but he played other Mozart roles at least equally often, particularly
PapagenoThe Magic Flute is an opera in two acts composed in 1791 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a Singspiel, a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue....
and
GuglielmoCosì fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti K. 588, is an opera buffa by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart first performed in 1790. The libretto was written by Lorenzo Da Ponte....
. He also played, and recorded, the Count in
The Marriage of FigaroLe nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata , K. 492, is an opera buffa composed in 1786 in four acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, based on a stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro .Although the play by...
. He is regarded by many as the best
EisensteinDie Fledermaus is an operetta composed by Johann Strauss II to a German libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genée.- Literary sources :...
in
Die FledermausDie Fledermaus is an operetta composed by Johann Strauss II to a German libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genée.- Literary sources :...
operetta.
He was at home with comic opera Italian-style, displaying scenic intelligence, liveliness and hilarity. His virtuoso agility and great comic acting made him an obvious choice for numerous productions of Mozart's and Rossini's operas in the 1970s. In 1972 he performed as Figaro in
Jean-Pierre PonnelleJean-Pierre Ponnelle was a noted French opera director.-Biography:Ponnelle was born in Paris. He studied philosophy, art, and history there and, in 1952, began his career in Germany as a theatre designer for Hans Werner Henze's opera Boulevard Solitude...
's television film of Rossini's
Il Barbiere di Siviglia with
Teresa BerganzaTeresa Berganza, born on March 16, 1935), is a Spanish mezzo-soprano. She is most closely associated with the roles of Rossini, Mozart, and Bizet. She is admired for her technical virtuosity, musical intelligence and beguiling stage presence.- Biography :...
as Rosina,
Luigi AlvaLuis Ernesto Alva y Talledo, better known as Luigi Alva is a Peruvian operatic tenor, active in the third quarter of the 20th century. He was admired for his purity of tone, the elegance of his phrasing and the clarity of his diction...
as Almaviva and conductor
Claudio AbbadoClaudio Abbado, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI , is an Italian conductor. He has served as music director of the La Scala opera house in Milan, principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, music director of the Vienna State Opera,...
. He appeared alongside
Fritz WunderlichFriedrich "Fritz" Karl Otto Wunderlich was a German lyric tenor, famed for his singing of the Mozart repertory and Italian and German opera and lieder. He died in an accident when he was only 35...
in the live televised version of
Il Barbiere di Siviglia in its German translation,
Der Barbier von Sevilla. He also portrayed Figaro in 1976 in Ponnelle's film of Mozart's
Le nozze di Figaro.
Prey also sang operetta and performed on German television, becoming extremely popular with television audiences. He shared media-celebrity with Fritz Wunderlich until the latter's untimely death, often playing Papageno to Wunderlich's Tamino.
He is best remembered for his recitals, his first American recital having been given in 1956. He was a gifted interpreter of
SchubertFranz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
, as well as other
Lieder (together with the German pianist
Sebastian PeschkoSebastian Peschko was a German classical pianist specialised in the art form of lieder and as such was partner to some of the foremost lyrical singers of the 20th century....
). He also appeared frequently in concert, particularly in the
BachJohann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
Passions and
BrahmsJohannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene...
'
A German RequiemA German Requiem, To Words of the Holy Scriptures, Op. 45 by Johannes Brahms, is a large-scale work for chorus, orchestra, and a soprano and a baritone soloist, composed between 1865 and 1868. It comprises seven movements, which together last 65 to 80 minutes, making this work Brahms's longest...
. A videotaped performance of Schubert's
lieder-cycle
SchwanengesangSchwanengesang is the title of a posthumous collection of songs by Franz Schubert.Unlike the earlier Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, it uses poems by three poets, Ludwig Rellstab , Heinrich Heine and Johann Gabriel Seidl . Schwanengesang has the number D 957 in the Deutsch catalogue...
is available.
Prey possessed a clear, polished tone - darker and deeper-sounding than his slightly older contemporary
Dietrich Fischer-DieskauDietrich Fischer-Dieskau is a retired German lyric baritone and conductor of classical music, one of the most famous lieder performers of the post-war period and "one of the supreme vocal artists of the 20th century"...
, but equally refined and equally capable of soaring into the tenor range without the smallest suggestion of vocal effort.
He recorded a multi-volume set for Phillips, tracing the history of the
Lied from the Minnesänger to the twentieth century. In addition, he released numerous recordings of opera and song.
Unlike Fischer-Dieskau, Prey wisely limited his Wagner to the soft, high-baritone roles
WolframTannhäuser is an opera in three acts, music and text by Richard Wagner, based on the two German legends of Tannhäuser and the song contest at Wartburg...
and
BeckmesserDie Meistersinger von Nürnberg is an opera in three acts, written and composed by Richard Wagner. It is among the longest operas still commonly performed today, usually taking around four and a half hours. It was first performed at the Königliches Hof- und National-Theater in Munich, on June 21,...
. He can be seen on video in the latter role, opposite
Bernd WeiklBernd Weikl is an Austrian operatic baritone, best known for his performances in the operas of Richard Wagner.- Early career :...
.
Starting in 1982, he taught at the Musikhochschule
Hamburg-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, and he wrote an autobiography which was translated as
First Night Fever (ISBN 0-7145-3998-8).
In 1988, he directed a production of
The Marriage of Figaro in Salzburg. His son Florian is also a baritone.
He died in
Krailling, BavariaStarnberg is a Kreis in the southern part of Bavaria, Germany. Neighboring districts are Fürstenfeldbruck, Munich, Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen, Weilheim-Schongau and Landsberg....
.
For many years,
Michael EndresMichael Endres is a German pianist.He was professor for piano from 1993 to 2004 at the Hochschule fuer Musik in Cologne, until 2009 at the Hochschule Hanns Eisler in Berlin—and since autumn 2009 has been professor for piano at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.-Early...
was the pianist to Hermann Prey.
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