Tauber, Richard

Opera singer (tenor)

born: 16.05.1891 in Linz

died: 08.01.1948 in London

Tauber, the famous lyric tenor who was particularly brilliant as an operetta singer, spent several years of his youth in Wiesbaden, where his father had been an actor at the Royal Court Theater since 1903. He received piano lessons from Artur Rother (1885-1972), solo repetiteur at the Wiesbaden theatre, and became friends with the heldentenor Heinrich Hensel, who was active at the court theater, and attended all the performances in which the singer took part. It was a friendship that awakened in him an urgent desire to become a singer himself.

He initially attended the Dr. Hoch'sche Konservatorium in Frankfurt am Main, where he learned to play the piano, compose and conduct. He then received his vocal training in Freiburg im Breisgau with the well-known Freiburg vocal coach Karl Beines. When his father became director of the Vereinigte Theater der Stadt Chemnitz in 1913, Tauber made his debut in the role of Tamino in Mozart's Magic Flute. In the same year, he received his first engagement at the Dresden Court Theater, the beginning of a career that took him to all the world's major stages.

Because of his Jewish origins, he had to emigrate to England in 1938.