Hans Hotter - Biography

Biography

Born in Offenbach am Main, Hesse, Hotter studied with Matthäus Roemer in Munich. He worked as an organist and choirmaster before making his operatic debut in Opava in 1930.

He performed in Germany and Austria under the Nazi regime, avoiding pressure on performers to join the Nazi Party, and made some appearances outside the country, including concerts under the baton of Bruno Walter in Amsterdam, who advised him that if Hotter could not leave his family members he had little alternative but remain in Germany. Hotter was unable to pursue an international career until his Covent Garden debut in 1947. After that, he sang in all the major opera houses of Europe. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut as the title role in The Flying Dutchman in 1950. In four seasons at the Met, he performed 35 times in 13 roles, almost all Wagnerian.

Probably Hotter's best known vocal achievement was his Wotan in Der Ring des Nibelungen, beginning with the Rheingold Wotan and ending with the Siegfried Wanderer ), which he first sang in the German provinces in his early 20's, and adding the Walküre shortly thereafter at the German theatre in Prague; he owned the roles until the mid-1960s, by which time his voice underwent a brief crisis owing to severe asthma, causing him to miss the first season of the postwar Bayreuth Festival in 1951, but he sang there for several years starting in 1952. His interpretation of Wotan in the operas Die Walküre and Siegfried was documented as part of Decca's famous Ring Cycle in the early 1960s, with Georg Solti conducting and record producer John Culshaw officiating. In addition, his interpretation of the role of Wotan was captured on live recordings from the Bayreuth Festival conducted by Clemens Krauss and Joseph Keilberth in the mid-1950s after a 1930s studio recording of Act II of Die Walküre had captured him not long after he had first sung the role. He also directed a complete Ring at Covent Garden from 1961 to 1964. His magnificent portrayal of Gurnemanz in Parsifal was preserved on record in Hans Knappertsbusch's second live recording at Bayreuth. While still singing these roles in Bayreuth, he also assumed the smaller role of Titurel in the same opera as part of the Bayreuth policy of switching off the most prominent artists from demanding principal roles to significant supporting parts, thus vouchsafing them the same fee for much less work while placing optimum vocal and dramatic artistry on the stage. The two recordings of Titurel were made long before his definitive recording of Gurnemanz made at the 1961 Festival.

A much-admired Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, he nevertheless preferred to sing the smaller and lower-pitched role of Pogner later in his career, because its tessitura was better suited to his voice. Similarly, he sang in Parsifal first as the low baritone Amfortas when he was younger and switched to the high bass Gurnemanz in later years. He was also celebrated for his Pizarro in Beethoven's Fidelio, of which a live 1960s recording from Covent Garden was issued for the first time in 2005 under the Testament label.

Although his international fame was almost entirely in the German repertoire, in Germany and Austria he was also known for performing Verdi in the vernacular and was, for example a popular Falstaff and a formidable Grand Inquisitor in Don Carlos, a role he performed in Italian in several theatres as well, including a breathtaking performance at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He performed, and recorded, several non-German opera roles in German translation, including "Graf Almaviva" (Mozart), Boris Godunov (Musorgsky) and Don Basilio (Rossini).

As a lieder singer he had few peers. Among German male singers of the 1950s and 1960s, only Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau commanded such widespread admiration and affection. Hotter, like his younger colleague, brought a true feeling for words as well as music to the songs of Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Wolf and others.

A passionate anti-Nazi, Hotter used to make fun of Hitler at parties and adamantly refused to take part in the Bayreuth Festival during the Third Reich because of the Festival's association with Hitler and his politics. According to Hotter's obituary in The Times, Hitler kept his records in his private collection. When Hotter was interrogated about this at a postwar denazification hearing, he answered that the Pope had some of them too.

Hotter never completely retired from the stage, making his final public appearance in his nineties after several seasons singing such significant character roles as Schigolch in Alban Berg's twelve-tone opera Lulu. He was a notable narrator in Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder, a role he continued to take well into his eighties.