Vienna mourns a Carlos Kleiber singer

Vienna mourns a Carlos Kleiber singer

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norman lebrecht

July 13, 2015

Josef 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).

Comments

  • DESR says:

    You’ve still got Eberhard W. not Josef H. on the main page!

  • Olof Axler says:

    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

  • DESR says:

    Also this was from the Bavarian State Opera, not Vienna.

  • DESR says:

    And when did Carlos conduct him, in Vienna or elsewhere, as the Italian Tenor in Rosenkavalier?

  • DESR says:

    I think he sang Alfred in Die Fledermaus under Kleiber on about 22 occasions in Munich, between 1984 and 1988.

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