Josef Greindl

Josef Greindl, having a tone of voice mellower and less trimming than those of Gottlob Frick or Kurt Böhme, non-etheless became a dominating existence in the heaviest German bass functions through the 1950s and 1960s. A broad vibrato bothered some listeners who have been delicate to such issues, but Greindl was a savvy plenty of designer to subdue the result in all however the most suffered passages and he was a canny existence. His Hagen exuded bad, while his Sarastro experienced a warmness and dignity that clarified the part as few others do. His occasional endeavors into Italian opera mainly occurred in Germany and mainly at the same time where Italian opera was sung there in the vernacular. Greindl sang the best bass functions in two important Ring cycles maintained on disk, first under Furtwängler in 1953 and under Clemens Krauss at Bayreuth in 1954. Research with bass Paul Bender, a previous leading designer in Munich, and Wagnerian soprano Anna Bahr-Mildenburg ready Greindl for his debut as Hunding inside a 1936 Krefeld creation. From 1938 to 1942, the youthful bass was involved at Düsseldorf. In 1942, Greindl started an extended association with Berlin, 1st in the Staatsoper (until 1949) and thereafter in the Berlin’s Städtische Oper. His debut in the Bayreuth Event emerged as Pogner in 1943, but his prominent years there started in earnest in 1951. Focusing his profession in European countries, Greindl spent only 1 season on the Metropolitan Opera: in 1952, Heinrich and Pogner sufficed for his NY opera appearances. Afterwards, nevertheless, he sang in Chicago, where his Daland and Alvise (in Italian, obviously) were noticed on the Lyric Opera in 1959. SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA heard him just in 1967 when his Ruler Marke was referred to as “wobbly,” although his Baron Ochs opposing Régine Crespin’s Marschallin was discovered more sufficient. In Berlin, the bass was very much respected for his Boris Godunov. In the last mentioned many years of his Bayreuth affiliation, he discontinued Pogner for Hans Sachs, handling the exhausting tessitura and tremendous amount of the function with skill and making a positive family portrait of the get good at cobbler. In 1973, Greindl was appointed a teacher of performing at Vienna’s Hochschule für Musik.