Fritz Feinhals by Gebr Lutzel

FRITZ FEINHALS
( b Cologne , 4Dec1869; d Munich , 30Aug1940).
German Baritone

After studies in Italy he made his début in 1895 as Silvio in Pagliacci at Essen, where he remained for two seasons. After a year in Mainz, in 1898 he joined the Munich Opera, where he was last heard in 1927. His Covent Garden début as Telramund won high praise in 1898, but he did not sing there again until Ernest Van Dyck's German season of 1907 when in addition to Telramund his roles were Hans Sachs, Kurwenal, Wolfram and Wotan (Die Walküre). He also appeared in Paris, Vienna, and Rostock, and in 1908–9 at the Metropolitan. There, in addition to the Wagnerian repertory, he sang Amonasro, and Sebastiano in the American première of Eugen D᾽;Albert's Tiefland. In 1917 he sang Borromeo in the world première of Palestrina at Munich, where he later taught. Though W. J. Henderson of the New York Sun wrote of his ‘glorious voice’, recordings made at about this time (1908) make painful listening. The volume is ample but the tone unsteady, the method providing scant evidence of his Italian training.