This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 207.237.243.185 (talk) at 06:41, 4 March 2010. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 06:41, 4 March 2010 by 207.237.243.185 (talk)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Josef Greindl (born 23 December 1912 in Munich - 16 April 1993 in Vienna, Austria) was a German bass.
Josef Greindl studied at the Munich Music Academy with Paul Bender. His debut was in 1936, as Hunding in Wagner's Die Walküre in the State Theatre in Krefeld. He is remembered mainly for his performances in Wagner at Bayreuth, from 1943 onwards. He sang in Wieland Wagner's last Ring. He played the part of King Mark in the 1952 Furtwängler performance of Tristan und Isolde. This vintage recording often appears in critics list of the top 100 greatest recordings, since Kirsten Flagstad was also in the cast. He has also been described as the most credible performer of Sachs in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. He sang at the Met in 1952-3. In 1973 he became a professor at the Vienna Hochschule. His daughter Gudrun Greindl Rosner is also a singer.
Josef Greindl had a voice like a gravel quarry—massive, wide, deep, rough, and ancient-sounding, grey-timbred rather than black. From the mid 1940s through the late 1960s he was one of the three or four leading performers of Wagner's and Mozart's big bass roles, possessing the size and strength for the former and the dexterity, brains, and extreme range for the latter. He frequently appeared as Fafner, Hunding, and Hagen in the same performance of the Ring Cycle, which made him the only singer in the cast who had to perform all four nights. His earliest recorded singing was at Bayreuth, as Pogner the goldsmith, a character in his fifties or sixties, in 1943 when he (Greindl) was 31 years old. Although he was not as tall as some other big basses, his stage-presence was formidable.
He was not nearly as well-publicised as his frequent co-star Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, but Josef Greindl's recorded repertoire is almost equally wide and full, including besides Mozart and Wagner beyond reckoning, most or all of the main bass roles by Gluck, Verdi, Richard Strauss, Schoenberg, Mussorgsky, Smetana, Debussy, Berg, Orff, and Pfitzner; lieder by Schubert and Carl Loewe; and sacred music by Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Verdi, Schubert, and Rossini. More than one hundred and twenty recordings have been available at one time or another.
Although he was famous for the low bass parts, his top was very comfortable and he began experimenting with higher roles in the 1960s: Hans Sachs (at which he excelled), the Wanderer in Siegfried, the title character in Der Fliegender Hollander and even Don Alphonso in Cosi Fan Tutte which is a high lyric baritone.
He can be seen on video as Hans Sachs, Hagen (brief excerpts only, sadly), Rocco, and the Commendatore, and as Hunding in a concert performance of Act I of Die Walküre.
Notes
External links
- Discography of opera recordings (Capon's Lists of Opera Recordings)