Franz Mazura

Franz Mazura ( born April 22, 1924 in Salzburg) is an Austrian opera and concert singer ( bass-baritone ).

He studied with Frederick Husler at the Detmold School of Music and has already worked during his studies as an actor at the State Theatre in Detmold. Mazura debuted in 1949 in Kassel, then sang in Mainz, Braunschweig and at the National Theatre Mannheim and debuted in 1960 at the Salzburg Festival in 1961 at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 1971 at the Bayreuth Festival in 1973 at the Hamburg State Opera, sang at the Bavarian State Opera, at the Metropolitan Opera, the Vienna State Opera, the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires and at the Paris Opera - 1976, amongst others, in Wagner's Das Rheingold, conducted by Georg Solti and Peter Stein.

1980 Mazura Kammersänger, 1990 Honorary Member of the National Theatre of Mannheim. In 2010 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit 1st class.

Franz Mazura applies due to the dark coloration of his voice and his tapping diction as an outstanding interpreter of classic villains of the early - to late-Romantic opera ( Don Pizarro in Fidelio, Alberich from The Ring of the Nibelung, Klingsor in Parsifal, Scarpia in Tosca ), but has a even bigger name for himself in the modern repertoire: as Moses in Moses und Aron, as a speaker in The Emperor of Atlantis and as Wozzeck. In 1979 he sang in the Paris première of Friedrich Cerha finished orchestrated, three-act version of Alban Berg's Lulu under Pierre Boulez and Patrice Chéreau the role of Dr. Schön.