Gottlob Frick

Gottlob Frick (28 July 1906 – 18 August 1994) was a German operatic bass. He was known for his wide repertory including Wagner and Mozart roles. Some of his most celebrated roles were Wagnerian villains such as Hunding and Hagen in Der Ring des Nibelungen, but others were noble characters like Sarastro in The Magic Flute or Gurnemanz in Parsifal or comic figures such as Osmin in Die Entführung aus dem Serail or Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor. He sang at the leading European opera houses in the 1950s and 1960s and recorded all his major roles.

Life and career Frick was born in Ölbronn, Württemberg on 28 July 1906, the youngest of thirteen children of a Swabian head forester and gamekeeper. In the mid-1920s he attended the Stuttgart Conservatory, studying under Fritz Windgassen (father of Frick’s contemporary, the tenor Wolfgang Windgassen). He first sang at Covent Garden in 1951, as Fafner, Hunding and Hagen in the four operas of Der Ring des Nibelungen, and appeared there frequently in the 1950s and 1960s. He officially retired from the operatic stage in 1970, but made occasional appearances after that, including what the critic John Steane called "his triumphant return to Covent Garden" in 1971 as Gurnemanz in Parsifal.

According to The Times, Frick, who had "one of those saturnine, dark voices that seem peculiar to the German-speaking countries", had: blockindent| ... a range of two octaves, from the low D of Mozart's Osmin up to a high G in the baritone register. It was a flexible, immediately recognisable instrument which its owner used with the utmost intelligence, as can be heard on his many discs. Although Frick was known for his portrayal of Wagnerian villains such as Hunding and Hagen in the Ring, he also played noble characters including Sarastro in The Magic Flute and Gurnemanz in Parsifal or comic figures such as Osmin in Die Entführung aus dem Serail or Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Frick died in Pforzheim in Baden-Württemberg on 18 August 1994, aged 88. In Steane's view, it is for this recording that Frick will be best remembered – "the embodiment of evil".