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An Interview With Tenor Peter Hofmann
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10007 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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4 / 1986 |
4,193 Words |
| Author
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Paul Gregory
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Peter Hofmann is arguably the greatest heldentenor of our era, a blue-eyed, golden-maned German singer widely regarded as the leading Wagnerian hero of the contemporary opera stages of Europe. But if he is a Siegfried of the divine vision, his is a talent that extends from the grand opera of Bayreuth into the world of rock music, where he has earned enormous fame and fortune through best-selling recordings and sold-out concert tours.
In December 1985 and January 1986 he played the title role in Lohengrin, in the company of Eva Marton as Eva and Leonie Rysanek as Ortrud, and then in April of this year the title role in Parsifal, opposite Leonie Rysanek as Kundry.
On opening night of the 1986-1987 Metropolitan Opera season Peter Hofmann will portray Siegmund, noble son of Wotan, amorous brother of Sieglinde, and doomed father of Siegfried, in Die Walkure, the first chapter to be mounted in a new production of the entire tetralogy of Der Ring des Nibelungen, Wagner's most monumental achievement. In fact, it was in the Ring cycle that American audiences first came to know this arresting star of stage and screen, for in the televised Chereau production for the Wagner centennial Hofmann undertook the role of Siegmund in Die Walkure and that of Siegfried in Siegfried and Gotterdammerung, the last two segments of the cycle initiated by Das Rheingold.
With the chiseled features and athletic build of a Teutonic warrior god, he sings with a bravura ease equal to that of any divo of our day, and his presence on the stage is somewhere between magnetic and mesmeric. A performance by Peter Hofmann, as any one of Wagner's supermen, is a transfixing experience not to be missed.
I met with Hofmann on a number of occasions during his visits to
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