Kammersänger Josef Witt (17 May 1901 – 3 January 1994) was a tenor who was a regular performer at the
Vienna State Opera before
WW II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
. His name is sometimes spelt Joseph Witt.
In 1923 Witt created the role of Li in
Hans Gál's opera, ''
Die heilige Ente
''Die heilige Ente: ein Spiel mit Göttern und Menschen'' (German: ''The sacred duck: a play with Gods and men'') is an opera with a prelude and three acts by the composer Hans Gál (his Op. 15), to a libretto by Karl Michael Leventzow and Leo Fe ...
'', in
Düsseldorf. He performed the role of
Palestrina in the production of
Pfitzner’s opera ''
Palestrina'' at the State Opera in 1937.
He conducted opera classes at the
Akadamie fur Musik und Darstellende Kunst in
Vienna until his death in 1990. Singers like
Norman Bailey,
Walter Berry,
Mimi Coertse and
Ernst Gutstein, who went on to have important opera careers in Austria and Germany, were among his students.
Roles created
* The airman in Hindemith's ''
Lehrstück'' (1929)
* Robespierre in Gottfried von Einem's ''
Dantons Tod'' (1947)
Recordings
He made several widely circulated recordings of
Strauss operas with
Karl Böhm and
Clemens Krauss, in which he sang secondary parts in operas like
Ariadne auf Naxos and
Arabella
''Arabella'', Op. 79, is a lyric comedy, or opera, in three acts by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, their sixth and last operatic collaboration.
Performance history
It was first performed on 1 July 1933 at the Dr ...
.
1901 births
1994 deaths
Austrian operatic tenors
Musicians from Vienna
Österreichischer Kammersänger
20th-century Austrian male opera singers
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