Joachim Daniel Preisler

Joachim Daniel Preisler (born in Copenhagen on 16 November 1755 2 April 1809) was a Danish actor.

Early life and education Joachim Daniel Preisler was born on 16 November 1755 in Copenhagen as the son of Johan Martin Preisler, a renowned professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. In his childhood, the German intellectual community of the day in Denmark, first among whom was the poet Klopstock, used to gather at his parents house. The young Joachim Daniel impressed the guests by speaking perfectly French, German, and Danish, reciting poetries, singing, and playing the piano or the violin. He is remembered among others for his impressive rendition of the character of Prince Gonzaga in Emilia Galotti by Lessing, where he excelled in displaying the ambiguity of the role which reflected to some extent his own character In August 1788 he met Mozart in Vienna and writes:

"There I had the happiest hour of music that has ever fallen to my lot. This small man and great master twice extemporized on a pedal pianoforte, so wonderfully! so wonderfully! that I quite lost myself. He intertwined the most difficult passages with the most lovely themes. - His wife cut quill-pens for the copyist, a pupil composed, a little boy aged four walked about in the garden and sang recitatives - in short, everything that surrounded this splendid man was music. I thought with pleasure of his Entführung aus dem Serail that I heard in Hamburg in 1787, but he called this Operette a trifle (Kleinigkeit). It would be unworthy of a man like Mozart to be praised by men who themselves count for nothing so I remained silent. He is writing church music in Vienna and inasmuch as the Singspiel (Operette) has come to an end he has nothing more to do with the theater"

In 1802 Preisler published a play called Die Invaliden oder der Triumph des 2. April and later an autobiographic novel entitled Ferdinand Braun, der Gothe.