Vienna mourns a Carlos Kleiber singer
mainJosef Hopferwieser, a stalwart tenor of the Vienna State Opera, has died at 77.
He used to sing while spraying cars. That earned him a voice scholarship in Graz.
He joined Vienna as a Heldentenor soloist in 1973 and sang on to his retirement in 1998, giving 472 performances in 35 roles.
He appeeared as Tenor/Bacchus (Ariadne auf Naxos), Matteo and Graf Elemér (Arabella), Herod and Narraboth (Salome), Sänger und Wirt (Der Rosenkavalier) – famously, in the Carlos Kleiber video – Walther von Stolzing (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg), Stimme des Seemanns (Tristan und Isolde), Laïos (Oedipe), Buryja (Jenufa), Max (Der Freischütz), Erik (Der fliegende Holländer) and Alfred (Die Fledermaus).
You’ve still got Eberhard W. not Josef H. on the main page!
The blonde man in the linked video is Renee Kollo. It is from the Bavarian State Opera, conducted by Carlos Kleiber.
http://www.deutschegrammophon.com/us/cat/0734015
That’s the recording I believe, but if you look on the track listing (and the cover) on the product page you provided it does read “Josef Hopferwieser”.
Yes, and the linked video doesn’t feature much if any tenor singing. Here’s perhaps a better choice from the same performance:
https://youtu.be/cpsLjASl8sk
Also this was from the Bavarian State Opera, not Vienna.
And when did Carlos conduct him, in Vienna or elsewhere, as the Italian Tenor in Rosenkavalier?
I think he sang Alfred in Die Fledermaus under Kleiber on about 22 occasions in Munich, between 1984 and 1988.