Fritz Wunderlich

Friedrich Karl Otto Wunderlich entered the world in Kusel, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany, on September 26, 1930, into a household steeped in music, with a conductor for a father and a violinist for a mother. To finance his vocal training at the Freiburg Musikhochschule, he led his own dance band. In 1954 he took the title role of Tamino in a student staging of Mozart’s “Die Zauberflöte,” which led directly to an engagement at the Stuttgart Opera beginning in 1955. After performing several minor roles, he again sang Tamino as his first major assignment there. He remained in Stuttgart until the Frankfurt Opera engaged him from 1958 to 1960. His Salzburg Festival debut occurred in 1959, when he portrayed Henry in Richard Strauss’s “Die schweigsame Frau.” In 1960 he joined the Munich Opera, and from 1962 onward he appeared regularly at the Vienna State Opera.

Wunderlich swiftly established himself as a leading lyric tenor, arguably the foremost German exponent of that Fach in the mid-twentieth century. His singing combined a clear, powerful tone with an unaffected delivery and scrupulous stylistic awareness. Although he achieved worldwide recognition in Mozart roles, he also moved into the lyrical Verdian territory, notably as Alfredo in “La Traviata,” and took on such parts as Lensky in Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin.” He ventured further afield by creating Tiresias in the premiere of Carl Orff’s “Oedipus der Tyrann” at Stuttgart in 1959 and by singing Christoph in Werner Egk’s “Die Verlobung in San Domingo” at Munich in 1962. He contemplated extending his reach still more, into the lyrical Wagnerian repertory, yet that plan remained unrealized. On September 17, 1966, he died in an accident at his Heidelberg home; his final performance had taken place earlier that summer when the Stuttgart Opera brought “Die Zauberflöte” to the Edinburgh Festival and he again sang Tamino.