Hans Hotter

Hans Hotter ranked among the twentieth century’s foremost singing actors. His dramatic intensity and vocal resources often drew comparisons to the Russian bass-baritone Feodor Chaliapin. Standing six feet four inches tall, he projected an imposing physical authority that suited the Wagnerian parts in which he specialized. Once Friedrich Schorr retired in 1943, Hotter was widely regarded as the preeminent Wotan in Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung tetrology.

Although he had prepared for work as an organist and choirmaster, his vocal gifts led him toward the stage. He made his debut at age twenty as the Speaker in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte at the modest theater in Opava. After engagements in Prague, Breslau, and Hamburg, he joined the Munich company in 1938 and remained closely linked to it for most of his career.

There he encountered Richard Strauss, who admired his singing and acting enough to create three roles for him. The first was the Commandant in Friedenstag, premiered in Munich in 1938. Strauss next wrote Jupiter in Die Liebe der Danae for him; Hotter sang the part at the dress rehearsal of the long-delayed Salzburg production just before theaters closed in 1944. In Strauss’s final opera, Capriccio, Hotter created the role of Olivier at its 1942 premiere.

After World War II ended, Hotter began performing abroad. He first appeared in London in 1947, singing Wotan and other roles in English-language productions, and remained highly esteemed there for the rest of his career. In 1950 he made a striking Metropolitan Opera debut as the protagonist of Wagner’s Fliegende Holländer. His enormous voice and formidable stage presence impressed both critics and audiences, again prompting comparisons with Chaliapin. After only a few seasons, however, general manager Rudolf Bing tried to steer him toward secondary parts, ending his Met tenure. Other houses welcomed him in his signature Wagner and Strauss roles, and he became a frequent guest in San Francisco and Chicago.

Vienna and several other European theaters gave him opportunities to sing parts he rarely performed in the United States, among them Don Basilio in Il barbiere di Siviglia and King Phillip in Verdi’s Don Carlo.

From the 1950s until his final public appearances in 1972, Hotter’s voice grew increasingly unsteady at full volume. Acute hay fever also troubled him during summer festivals such as Bayreuth. Even so, his interpretations remained compelling, and Georg Solti chose him for the Ring recording well after his prime.

Though best known for opera, Hotter was an outstanding interpreter of German lieder, a repertory he actually preferred to opera. Over three decades he recorded extensively in this field. His ability to temper his large instrument while illuminating textual detail suited the songs perfectly, and later compact-disc reissues of his finest recordings have won admiration from a new generation of listeners.