Stuttgart and Munich
Hans Pfitzner as Director of the Strasbourg Opera from 1910, sought to stage his Der Arme Heinrich at Stuttgart, but needed a suitable tenor to convey the spiritual depths of the work. Von Putlitz decided that Erb was the only singer suitable. Pfitzner himself came to Stuttgart to ask him, and he made a great success. The Munich Hoftheater, urged by Mottl, offered to engage him when the Stuttgart contract ended. Erb wanted to go, but there were three years remaining at Stuttgart: he declined a Munich offer of a guest Tannhaüser as too heavy for his voice.
However Pfitzner, seeking to raise a Munich Hoftheater boycott on performance of his works, rewrote the Arme Heinrich role for Erb, and staged it with him at the Prinzregententheater at Munich, privately, whereupon von Speidel for the Hoftheater asked Erb his price and was told 24,000 Marks per year. Munich offered a guest role in Lohengrin, which he took, and later a Florestan and a Hoffmann. In 1912 and 1913 he sang six performances a month at Stuttgart and fitted in guest appearances at Tübingen, Ulm, Lübeck, Berlin, and Wiesbaden. In September 1912 the new Stuttgart Hoftheater was completed and Erb sang Walter in Meistersinger.
A month later, 25 October, at Stuttgart, Richard Strauss conducted the première of his Ariadne auf Naxos. The first and third performances were with the élite soloists Maria Jeritza, Margarethe Siems, Herman Jadlowker: the second was the Stuttgart team, Erb as Bacchus. In May 1913 at the Imperial performance at Wiesbaden he sang Hüon in Oberon. The Kaiser said to him, 'You must be a good Lohengrin. Tell Baron von Putlitz I thank him for having sent such a good performer of Huon.' Erb's farewell to Stuttgart after his six years there was as Lohengrin.
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