Biography (read more)
Hermann Prey was born in Berlin in 1929 and studied voice at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin. He made his American debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1952 and his Carnegie Hall recital debut in 1956, serving as a resident performer at the Hamburg State Opera until 1960 and debuting at Bayreuth in 1965 as Wolfram in Tannhäuser.
Prey was one of the leading lyric baritones of the postwar era, especially renowned as an interpreter of Schubert Lieder and comic roles such as Figaro and Eisenstein, and he appeared frequently at the Metropolitan Opera from the 1960s into the early 1990s. He founded the first Schubertiade festival in Vorarlberg in 1976, recorded an extensive multi-volume Lieder collection, and later taught at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, leaving a lasting legacy in German song repertoire before his death in 1998.
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