Fritz Wunderlich--New Post!

I give you the incomparable Fritz Wunderlich. I can't comprehend why I haven't posted more of him. He was an amazing singer who was taken from us far too young--at age 36, months before his planned Metropolitan Opera debut. Here is a less than stellar Wikipedia bio-blurb. Here is a fan site that looks like it's chock full of information!

In this clip he's lip-synching on a German TV show, performing "Dies Bildnis" from Die Zauberflöte:





Wunderlich was a remarkably fine interpreter of song and I highly recommend his recordings, especially of the Schubert and Schumann song cycles. This is a Richard Strauss song, accompanied by his frequent collaborator, Hubert Giessen, a clip from a television documentary about FW. In the sadly untranslated interview after the song, Giessen is raving about FW's interpretive talents. (No, I'm not fluent in German--I have the DVD with subtitles!)





There aren't many videos of performances online. I had made a post featuring clips from a televised performance of Barbiere in German from Munich, also featuring Hermann Prey as Figaro, but those clips were taken down, I believe, so the post went to live with Jesus. I was delighted to find my family actually looks at my Amazon wish list and gave me the DVD of this performance, though!