Anton Raaff

Anton Raaff (also: Raaf; born May 6, 1714 Gelsdorf in Bonn, † May 28, 1797 in Munich ) was a famous tenor.

Life

To the life of Anton Raaff entwine many stories and legends. So he should have been, for example, born the son of a poor shepherd.

Is proven that he came in 1714 Gelsdorf in Bonn, the son of John and Anna Margarethe Raaff born chef to the world. After birth, when exactly is unclear, the family moved to Holzem where the father may steward was at Castle Gudenau.

Anton Raaff got an education at the prestigious Jesuit high school in Bonn. For the year 1726 his involvement in a performance of the school is occupied. There he also Elector Clemens August will have heard for the first time, of its supposed to do after high school and hired him in 1736 as a court and chamber musician.

Raaff got an education in Munich with Antonio Bernacchi in Bologna and at Padre Giambattista Martini. Already in 1742 sang Raaff in Florence and Venice, and at the coronation Charles VII in Frankfurt Cathedral. In the same year he returned to the Bonn court Clemens August and was Electoral minstrels. His request to become a clergyman, suggested from the elector.

Raaff remained until 1749 at the Bonn court and then followed a commitment to the Viennese court of the Empress Maria Theresa. It was followed by appearances at the major courts of Europe such as Bologna, Livorno, Portugal, Madrid and Lisbon.

In 1755 he met the castrato Farinelli, with whom he had a close friendship. 1760 Raaff sang at the King of Naples, where he rose to become the leading tenor of the Neapolitan opera yard. Nine years he remained there before he came over Florence at the Mannheim Opera, where Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart heard him sing 1777. Since Anton Raaff was already an acclaimed stage star, who was at the peak of his art. Two years later, Mozart wrote the title role of " Idomeneo " for him.

This opera was at the same time Raaff last title role. After 1781 he sang at no stage more, but only in churches and also gave singing lessons. The last years before his death he lived in Munich in the same household with his longtime friend, the clergyman and numismatists Franz Ignaz von nerds, both led a decidedly religious life, but also operated esthetic and scientific.

Anton Raaff was probably the most famous tenor of the 18th century. In his book "The European Mannheim " (1940 ) Ernst Leopold Stahl wrote about him:

" Four decades of enormous international fame had him neither his personal simplicity, nor to rob his in those days in the singer's world hardly encountered religiosity been able to have the desire made ​​even at the peak of his success to life in him to convert to holy orders. If he's still the Seventy, like no other, on stage his man was, the reason its not just the fact that he had thoroughly learned singing and permanently maintained, but had that behind the song was a person with warmth of heart ... "