Nicola Perscheid - Fritz Soot als Siegfried

Friedrich Wilhelm Soot (20 August 1878 - 9 June 1965) was a German opera singer (

tenor A tenor is a type of male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone voice types. It is the highest male chest voice type. Composers typically write music for this voice in the range from the second B below m ...

Life

Born in , Soot became an early member of the

Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe The Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe is a theatre and opera house in Karlsruhe, Germany. It has existed in its present form and place at Ettlinger Tor since 1975. Achim Thorwald became the Theater manager, Intendant in summer 2002 and held that ...

ensemble. At the same time he studied singing between 1900 and 1907 and made his official debut as Tonio in 1908. In 1909 he also took part in the sensational

premiere A premiere, also spelled première, (from , ) is the debut (first public presentation) of a work, i.e. play, film, dance, musical composition, or even a performer in that work. History Raymond F. Betts attributes the introduction of the ...

of Strauss' ''

Elektra Electra, also spelt Elektra, was a daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra in Greek mythology. Electra or Elektra may also refer to: Animals * ''Electra'' (bryozoan), a genus of aquatic invertebrates * ''Elektra'' (bug), a genus of insects in the ...

'' at the

Semperoper The Semperoper () is the opera house of the Sächsische Staatsoper Dresden (Saxon State Opera) and the concert hall of the Staatskapelle Dresden (Saxon State Orchestra). It is also home to the Semperoper Ballett. The building is located on the Th ...

in Dresden. After the First World War Soot was engaged at the

Staatstheater Stuttgart The Staatstheater Stuttgart (Stuttgart State Theatre) is a theatre with three locations, Staatsoper Stuttgart, Oper Stuttgart (Opera Stuttgart), Stuttgart Ballet, Stuttgarter Ballett (Stuttgart Ballet), and Schauspiel Stuttgart (Stuttgart Drama ...

. There he was able to make a name for himself as an interpreter of

Richard Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, essayist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most o ...

. Between 1922 and 1944 Soot was regarded as the "star" of the

Staatsoper Unter den Linden The Staatsoper Unter den Linden ( State Opera under the Lime Trees), also known as the Berlin State Opera (), is a listed building on Unter den Linden boulevard in the historic center of Berlin, Germany. The opera house was built by order of Pr ...

. At the same time he had regular appearances at the summer festival of

Sopot Sopot (; or ) is a seaside resort city in Pomerelia on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea in northern Poland, with a population of approximately 40,000. It is located in Pomeranian Voivodeship, Pomerania Province and has the City with powiat ri ...

between 1924 and 1931. In the winter of 1924/25 Soot made an extremely successful guest appearance at the

Covent Garden Theatre The Royal Opera House (ROH) is a theatre in Covent Garden, central London. The building is often referred to as simply Covent Garden, after a previous use of the site. The ROH is the main home of The Royal Opera, The Royal Ballet, and the Orch ...

in London. In 1935 he was brought to the State Opera in Berlin as the "director of the artistic office". In 1941 he took part in the

Zarah Leander Zarah Leander (; 15 March 1907 – 23 June 1981) was a Sweden, Swedish singer and actress whose greatest success was in Germany between 1936 and 1943, when she was contracted to work for the state-owned UFA GmbH, Universum Film AG (UFA). Althou ...

movie ' as a "singer at the rehearsal" (Zarah Leander played an opera singer). After the Second World War Soot appeared again as a singer from 1946 to 1952, but could not quite continue his earlier successes. In the winter of 1952/53 Soot gave his farewell performance and retired from public life. At age 86 Fritz Soot died on June 9, 1965, in Berlin and found his last resting place there.

Roles (selection)

* Tonio – ''

La fille du régiment LA most frequently refers to Los Angeles, the second most populous city in the United States of America. La, LA, or L.A. may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * La (musical note), or A, the sixth note *"L.A.", a song by Elliott Smi ...

'' (Donizetti) * Mephistofeles – ''

Doktor Faust ''Doktor Faust'' is an opera by Ferruccio Busoni with a German libretto by the composer, based on the myth of Faust. Busoni worked on the opera, which he intended as his masterpiece, between 1916 and 1924, but it was still incomplete at the time o ...

'' (Busoni) * Young Servant – ''

'' (Strauss) * Italian Singer – ''

Der Rosenkavalier (''The Knight of the Rose'' or ''The Rose-Bearer''), Op. 59, is a comic opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to an original German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It is loosely adapted from Louvet de Couvrai's novel ''Les amours du cheva ...

'' (Strauss) * ''Tambourmajor –

Wozzeck ''Wozzeck'' () is the first opera by the Austrian composer Alban Berg. Composed between 1914 and 1922, it premiered in 1925. It is based on the drama '' Woyzeck'', which German playwright Georg Büchner left incomplete at his death. Berg attende ...

'' (Berg) * Asmodi – ''Das Herz'' (

Hans Pfitzner Hans Erich Pfitzner (5 May 1869 – 22 May 1949) was a German composer, conductor and polemicist who was a self-described anti-modernist. His best known work is the post-Romantic opera ''Palestrina'' (1917), loosely based on the life of the ...

) * Hoffmann – ''

The Tales of Hoffmann ''The Tales of Hoffmann'' (French: ) is an by Jacques Offenbach. The French libretto was written by Jules Barbier, based on three short stories by E. T. A. Hoffmann, who is the protagonist of the story. It was Offenbach's final work; he died in ...

'' (Offenbach) * Speaker of the Court of the Dead – ''

Die Verurteilung des Lukullus ''Die Verurteilung des Lukullus'' (''The Condemnation of Lucullus'') is an opera by Paul Dessau to a libretto by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht. Brecht's dramatic text for the opera is more or less identical to that of the radio-play '' The ...

'' (Dessau) Fritz Soot
on vocal-classics.com

Bibliography

Walther Killy Walther Killy (26 August 191728 December 1995) was a German literary scholar who specialised in poetry, especially that of Friedrich Hölderlin and Georg Trakl. He taught at the Free University of Berlin, the Georg-August-Universität Götting ...

among others (editor): ''

Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie The ''Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie'' (''DBE'') is a biographical dictionary published by Walther Killy and Rudolf Vierhaus (from the third to fourth volume), the first edition of which was published from 1995 to 2003 in 13 volumes by K. ...

'', .

References

External links

* Klaus Ulrich Spiegel
''„Darf ich mich Meister nennen …“ Der interessante dramatische Tenor Fritz Soot''
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Soot, Fritz 1878 births 1965 deaths People from Neunkirchen, Saarland German operatic tenors 20th-century German male opera singers