Fritz Wunderlich, tenor,
september 26, 1930

On 26th September 1930, Friedrich ‘Fritz’ Karl Otto Wunderlich was born in Kusel Germany.  It was just short of his thirty sixth birthday when tragically, he was found dead after falling down a stone staircase whilst staying at a friend’s castle on a hunting trip. The world had lost one of its brightest stars in the tenor repertoire and now we must rely on the recordings of his vocal brilliance, which were thankfully many, in his brief ten year career to wonder at the talent of this great Opera and Concert artist. His untimely demise sent shock waves throughout the music world and is still difficult to comprehend to this day.

Both Fritz’s parents were musical. They ran an inn which needed major repairs to be able to keep the building from being condemned. On the day of his birth his father posted a sign on the pub ‘Fritzchen (Little Fritz) has arrived today, Pub Closed.’^[1] Eventually the family had to move out and soon after this move,  he lost his father. It was then left to his mother to make ends meet. Both he and his sister helped out. Fritz learned to play the accordion, piano and the French horn which he mastered particularly well ^[2] and his remarkable breath control that became one of the hallmarks of his singing has been attributed to his prowess with the latter instrument.

Although his mother had plans for Fritz to be a public servant, he had his heart set on a career in music and was always willing to take on minor parts in the amateur choir that the conductor Emmerich Smola formed. Smola recognised his ‘glorious voice’ and it was arranged for him to study french horn and voice at Freiburg Conservatory. To assist with his tuition he received reduced tuition costs and he also played in a band to support himself whilst studying with his teacher and mentor Maria von Winterweldt.^[3]

After being noticed singing Tamino in Die Zauberflöte in a student production he accepted a contract to sing at Stuttgart Opera debuting as Ulrich Eislinger in Die Meistersinger von Nürenberg.

His international breakthrough came when Karl Böhm engaged him to sing at the Salzburger Festspiele in Richard Stauß’s Die Schweigsame Frau. So successful was his performance that Herbert von Karajan came to his dressing room after the performance and offered him a contract to sing at the Vienna State Opera which he had to turn down due to him signing with Munich Opera the week before.^[4]

He was and still is the quintessential Mozartian tenor, a voice that masters the necessities and rigours of the German language, expression and style with the exuberance, clarity and ease of the Italianate bel canto.

He was equally at home with Lied and Oratorio as indeed his recordings masterfully exhibit.

His accompanist, friend and collaborator on many of his recordings and performances Hubert Gieşen gives us an insight into Wunderlich’s character in his book, Am Flügel ( At the Piano)

’In the years of close co-operation with Fritz Wunderlich, I was sometimes overcome with a kind of fear: in spite of his carefreeness, in spite of his joy, confidence and coolness; he ‘burned the candle at both ends’. He drew on unlimited resources; he did everything with an enormous energy and intensity, as if he knew that he had only a limited period of time left. He bought cameras and became a colour photographer who developed his photographs in his own lab that he had specially furnished. That took him a lot of time and also cost him a lot of money. He had the village blacksmith forge a spit that he used for roasting meat on an open fire. He gave charming parties, often lasting half the night, where he drank and smoked quite freely, as if he was not a singer whose precious voice was a great asset. Sometimes one could virtually feel the stress he was living in.’^[5]

Then to demonstrate his friend’s vocal virtuosity and musical understanding Giesen wrote,

‘He had such a great comprehension of a song like “Die böse Farbe” (from Schubert’s “Müllerin” cycle) that he was able to afford letting the song be effective just on its own. The listener will notice that he sang it nearly unadorned, but in such a clarity that not a single note could be lost. Nothing was elegantly passed over; he did not put in any false emotionalism or sentiment, and thus he made the greater – one could even say the noblest – impression. The audience received first-hand what was Schubert’s will when he composed the song. They were not confronted with the singer’s emotions, his coquetry, his love of bel canto, but solely with the song itself. There were years of work underlying, years of a growing knowledge of precision, one could even say: work in the service of Lieder singing. Wunderlich had high notes that turned out well effortlessly, but he sang them without showing off, just as he sang all other notes that belonged to the song. This seemed to be severe and objective, but made a strange impression on the audience. Many years after his death, a lady told me: “I have heard ‘Die böse Farbe‘ sung by many singers (and she named some really great ones), but it was only Fritz Wunderlich who made me weep, because I did not hear the singer anymore, I heard only the song. It was as if I had understood for the first time what it expressed…”^[6]

He was due to make his Metropolitan Opera debut as Don Octavio in Mozart’s Don Giovanni in New York before that fateful night and fall that cost him his life and silenced a voice and talent from the world rather like Mozart also dying before he reached his thirty sixth year.