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Posted by Jonathan Woolf I don’t know the cause of his death, though it does seem to have been progressive and not sudden, but he was still recording up to 1908 and singing until 1909. As far as I know Briesemeister made only 25 sides and 3 Edison cylinders between 1904 and 1908. The record labels were Grammophon, Anker, Beka and Odeon and they’re all very rare. On disc he was variously accompanied by the ubiquitous Seidler-Winkler (piano) and by conductor Friedrich Kark. The last records were styled “Herzogl. Kammersanger” and he also tended to retain his Dr. on disc and programme. The vast bulk of these records were of Wagner but he did record Schubert, Schumann and Verdi. Some work still needs to be done on his records. He is naturally included in the big 10 CD 100 Jahre Bayreuth auf Schallplatte; the early Festival Singers 1876-1906 where he’s represented by five sides. The author and compiler of this Preiser disc has already included him in a previous compilation Helden an geweihtem ort alongside such Wagner luminaries as Winkelmann, Ernest van Dyck, Jacques Urlus, Carl Burrian, Slezak and others. Jonathan Woolf
on November 18, 2006, 1:25 pm, in reply to "http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2006/Nov06/Wagner_Preiser89940.htm"
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Actually Otto Briesemeister (1866-1910) was a most interesting singer. He became a military physician but took singing lessons and made his debut in 1893 in Il Trovatore. He was based in Breslau before being invited, I believe by Cosima Wagner, to sing at Bayreuth. It was here that he really made his mark, as the leading Loge of his time, and he sang at Bayreuth every year for a decade, until 1909, the year before his premature death. He also sang Siegfried, Lohengrin, and Siegmund there and elsewhere. He guested in Berlin, Munich, all over Germany in fact, and also Scandinavia and London. The fact that he managed to carry on his dual career as leading Wagner tenor and throat specialist in Berlin is a matter of interest! I’m not sure if this contributed to an odd situation with regard to the Met in New York. Wrongly I assumed he’d sung there but it appears he had a “provisional contract” – whatever that is – and never actually appeared on stage there, though clearly his reputation had preceded him.
It’s a shame that the great rarity and paucity of his recordings have somewhat obscured his distinguished career and perhaps discouraged English-speaking writers from investigating him but as the twentieth century’s first great Loge he will always have an honoured place. I did complain in my review that he was a bit of a bleater but at least he wasn’t a typical 1900 Wagner bawler; better a bleat than a bawl any day so far as I’m concerned.
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