TESTAMENT

emained on the roster until the end of her career, while
making guest appearances throughout the world and at
many of the major festivals. She died in June 1987.
Ludwig Weber (Fasolt) was born in 1899 in Vienna. In
1919 he began to study singing with Alfred Boruttau, with
whom he remained for five years. His professional career
began in 1920 when he was engaged by Felix Weingartner
to join the Vienna Volksoper, and he first appeared on
stage in the small part of Fiorello in Il barbiere di Siviglia.
Between 1925 and 1933 he successively joined the opera
companies in Barmen-Elberfeld, Düsseldorf and Cologne,
while fulfilling a number of engagements elsewhere. He
first sang at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich in the
1931 Wagner Festival, and in 1933 was invited to join the
resident company, where he remained until the end of the
Second World War. During the war years he was also one
of the stalwarts of the Salzburg Festivals. One of his biggest
successes in Munich was his performance of Boris
Godunov, which some rated as his finest operatic
portrayal. Weber first sang in London at Covent Garden in
1936 as Pogner, Gurnemanz, Hunding and Hagen, and his
La Scala début took place in 1938. In 1945 he joined the
Vienna Staatsoper and became one of its major stars until
his retirement in 1966. In 1955 he sang Rocco in Fidelio
on the opening night of the rebuilt Vienna Opera House,
and the following night there he sang the Commendatore
in Don Giovanni. He first appeared at Bayreuth in 1951 as
Gurnemanz, Hagen and Fasolt, and continued to sing
there regularly for a number of years in a variety of roles.
After retiring from the operatic stage, he devoted himself to
teaching. He died in his native Vienna on 9 December
1974.
Josef Greindl (Fafner) was born on 23 December 1912 in
Munich and died on 16 April 1993 in Vienna. From 1932
he studied at the Munich Academy of Music with Paul
Bender and Anna Bahr-Mildenburg and in 1936 made his
formal operatic début as Hunding in Krefeld, where he
remained until 1938. He then moved to Düsseldorf, where
he took part in 1941 in the première of the opera Die Hexe
von Passau by Ottmar Gerster. In 1942 he joined the Berlin
State Opera under the directorship of Heinz Tietjen, and
remained on the roster until 1948. Around 1949 he
became a member of the Städtische Oper (later Deutsche
Oper) Berlin, and remained on its roster until 1970, giving
altogether 1,369 performances, and at the same time was
from 1956 to 1969 also a member of the Vienna State
Opera. In 1943 he made his first appearance at the
Bayreuth Festival as Pogner in Die Meistersinger. He
returned regularly to Bayreuth from 1951 to 1969, and his
TESTAMENT
booklet note
English
roles included Pogner, the Landgraf (Tann-häuser), Hans
Sachs, Daland, Gurnemanz, Titurel, King Heinrich
(Lohengrin), Marke (Tristan und Isolde), Fafner, Fasolt, the
Wanderer and Hagen. Greindl’s international career took
him to London, Paris, Milan, Buenos Aires, the Met in New
York and the Salzburg Festival. In addition to his Wagner
roles, he also sang Sarastro, Don Alfonso, Rocco, the
Commendatore (Don Giovanni) and other major parts, and
participated in a number of important premières, including
Carl Orff’s Antigonae in Salzburg in 1949 and the first
German stage performance of Schoenberg’s Moses und
Aron in Berlin in 1959. In 1961 Greindl was made a
professor at the Saarbrücken Music High-School, and in
1973 he was made a professor at the Vienna Music High-
School.
Jutta Vulpius (Woglinde), a member of the same family as
Christiane Vulpius, the wife of Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe, was born in Erfurt on 31 December 1927 and
studied in Weimar with Franziska Martienssen-Lohmann,
who also taught Ingrid Bjoner, Hildegard Hillebrecht and
Elisabeth Grümmer. She made her début in 1951 as Queen
of the Night at the Komische Oper in East Berlin, and soon
afterwards appeared for the first time at the State Opera
there as well. Unlike many of her colleagues during the era
of German division, she enjoyed an excellent career on
both sides of the Wall, making guest appearances in many
West German cities and other Western European capitals.
She sang a Flowermaiden in Parsifal at Bayreuth between
1954 and 1956, as well as Woglinde in 1955. She was also
featured in the world première of Paul Dessau’s opera
Einstein.
Elisabeth Schärtel (Wellgunde) was born on 6 October
1919 in Weiden in the Upper Palatinate and studied, inter
alia, with Elisabeth Bahr-Mildenburg at the Munich
Academy. She made the usual German career at the time,
during which she moved from smaller theatres in
Regensburg and Freiburg to medium-sized houses in
Braunschweig and Nuremberg, then finally to Cologne
where she joined the roster in 1960. She made guest
appearances in even larger theatres such as the Vienna
State Opera and the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, as well as at
such festivals as the Maggio Musicale in Florence and
Bayreuth, where her repertoire ranged from Wellgunde to
Ortrud. In 1961 she was awarded the Max Reger Medal.
Following her retirement she became a professor at the
Academy in Nuremberg.
Maria Graf (Floßhilde) was trained by Anny Konetzni at
the Vienna Conservatoire. She sang in the Vienna State