Herbert Schachtschneider

Herbert Schachtschneider (5 February 1919 – 26 October 2008) was a German operatic tenor and voice teacher.

Career Born in Allenstein, East Prussia (Olsztyn, Poland), Schachtschneider grew up in Berlin and began his private singing studies in 1936, one year before graduating from high school. From 1937 to 1939 he was a student of Julius von Raatz-Brockmann at the Musikhochschule Berlin.

On return to Germany he appeared in revues and musicals, in television productions at NDR and at the . Engagements on the stages in Flensburg, Mainz and Essen followed. Finally, in 1959 he came to the Cologne Opera, Guest performances took him to Vienna, Buenos Aires, La Scala in Milan and London. He worked with conductors such as Siegfried Köhler, Hans Swarowsky, Rafael Kubelík, Joseph Keilberth, Nello Santi and Wolfgang Sawallisch. He appeared in the first performance in the UK of Schoenberg's Von heute auf morgen, in a concert performance in 1963, conducted by Antal Doráti, and took part in the first recording of that opera, conducted by Robert Craft.

Schachtschneider's broad repertoire of roles included the Duke in Verdi's Rigoletto, the title role of his Otello, Samson in Samson et Dalila and the title role in Wagner's Tannhäuser. He sang in Wieland Wagner's staging of his grandfather's The Ring of the Nibelung in Cologne, with George London as Wotan. In Berlin he sang Mephistopheles in Busoni's Doktor Faust . Richard Wagner: Lohengrin, complete recording, Hans Swarowsky, 1968, (CD Weltbild Classics, 24 April 1996) Hans Ulrich Engelmann: Der Fall van Damm, excerpts, Michael Gielen, 1968

Literature Ekkehard Pluta: Die vier Tenöre – in einem. In Opernwelt September/October 2004,