His Opera characters are people too

This is called psychological flexibility: Just, Johannes Martin Kränzle for the monologue of a murderer in janáček's Opera has received "From the house of the dead" the theatre prize the Faust, and now he is rehearsing a curious old rooster that will be ripped off. You will not schizophrenic here?

Kränzle grins and shakes his head. Actually, he says, play it for him no matter whether he was a tragic or comic figure: "Comedy is always kind of a seriousness; easy to place Gags, not that I wish I was so interesting." Conversely, even the Serious is not with him seriously, "it should shimmer a little bit".

"The nurses came to me in the isolation room, because it was so sad."Johannes Martin Kränzle

Kränzle says that as a singer, but not only. That Humor can help when there is to laugh actually, nothing he has experienced in the past few years, especially off the stage. 2015 was diagnosed with the aggressive bone marrow disease MDS; a stem cell transplant was necessary, "and I've noticed that the nurses came to me in the isolation room, because it was so sad".

for Over a year, the Singing was not an issue for him, "it was only a matter of Survival". He is back now, in fact, that the voice work in spite of all the medication again and he can stand the rigors of gigs, he sees as a miracle: "So that no one has expected." Accordingly, he experienced the return to the stage. As he was singing shortly after the restart, in Paris, his first Wozzeck, and thus the long-awaited debut in the Role of was able to catch up, which he had missed because of the illness, "as I have after the performance, only cried in the dressing room".

Long list with request games

in the Meantime, he is back in business. Maybe a little less sporty than in the past, "race and then singing became more difficult," but with lots of plans in my head. On its Website, Kränzle has a wish list connected with roles that he wanted to sing that for the first time, or he would get a second Time offered. Hits and rarities to be found on the stylistic spectrum ranges from Rossini, Schönberg up to Cole Porter's Musical "Kiss Me, Kate". At the top however, not only for alphabetical reasons, to Alban Berg's "Wozzeck": "This is really the game that I would wish for most of all once again."

Not listed, he has singers and the beckmesser in Wagner's "Usually" that has become his signature role: "The sing I need at the moment, every summer in Bayreuth, the more I him not." He did not want to be "on a role reduce," says Kränzle, although this role is actually – so much so that he has received for 2018 in the critics poll of the magazine "Opera world" for the second Time the title of "singer of the year".

In the first five minutes of this Bayreuth recording of Johannes Martin Kränzle sings the song of the Beck knife and is Full constantly interrupted by Hans Sachs (Michael). Video: Youtube

To the right. No one on the Beck knife so deftly on the line between art and caricature as he is, no one shows him as human in its ridiculousness. He did not want to show this figure, but it will show that you know in your again, says Kränzle: "the fact That a boastful and then the nose falls, or that one failed a test, vulnerable, is excluded – this can happen to anyone."

Perhaps this is the key to the art of this now 57-year-old singer, That he sees his characters as people, not as templates. Not as a vehicle for the vocal show. And not as components of any concepts of staging in which the actors almost disappear behind the many Videos that he is interested "not so much".

As a very agile baritone Kränzle is predestined, the Don Pasquale of the caricature of the grumpy Old away.

he's killed each other on the stage, the may also be every Time a bit different. The language also speaks a character, respectively, is singing – and he approaches carefully, if it is a foreign language: he would Never make his debut in a French play in Paris, "because I would have the cuffs".

the Russian, he tried, therefore, in Germany, French in Italy. And now he's rehearsing in Zurich for the first time, the Don Pasquale in the Donizetti Opera of the same name. Also he does not list on Kränzles request, the offer came as a surprise: "most of the time you get for this role, a singer with a thick, heavy bassbuffo voice." Kränzle is a very moving baritone – and thus predestined, these anti-heroes a bit of the caricature of the grumpy Old away.

He speaks also of the solitude of this "Don Pasquale", of his good faith, of his longing to fall in love again. That is then exploited mercilessly, "there is not only in the Opera". According to complex, he wants to represent this figure.

Funny, it's supposed to be, however, nevertheless, of course, is: "otherwise It would be a shame to have the piece."

Premiere of Donizetti's "Don Pasquale" at the Zurich Opera house: Sunday, 8. December, 19 At.

Created: 03.12.2019, 17:02 PM