Gerhard Hüsch

Gerhard Heinrich Wilhelm Fritz Hüsch (2 February 1901 – 23 November 1984) was one of the most important German singers of modern times. A lyric baritone, he specialized in Lieder but also sang, to a lesser extent, German and Italian opera.

Hüsch was born in Hanover in 1901. He studied acting there as a young man but later took up singing, gaining experience at a series of provincial German theatres, proving to be a brilliant comic actor. Between 1925 and 1944, he was engaged to sing regularly in Berlin (most significantly at the Berlin State Opera) and at several other leading opera venues in Germany and Austria. Such important overseas theatres as The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, and La Scala, Milan, heard him sing during the 1930s, when his international reputation attained its peak.

The operatic role for which he is perhaps best remembered is that of Papageno, in Mozart's The Magic Flute. (In 1937-38 he recorded a complete Papageno for HMV, with Sir Thomas Beecham conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.) His stage repertoire, however, included most of the standard roles for the lighter baritone voice, including those of Wagner. Indeed, he was invited to perform at the annual Bayreuth Festival, most famously in 1930 and 1931 as Wolfram in Tannhäuser, under the baton of Arturo Toscanini. The vocal music of Richard Strauss was familiar to him, too, and he took part in the premiere of Strauss's Intermezzo.

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