Exhibition
Friedrich Plaschke
January 2025
(b.Jaroměř, 7 January 1875; d.Prague, 4 February 1952)
This month we feature a postcard image of the renowned Czech bass-baritone Friedrich Plaschke. Born in Jaroměř in the Czech Republic, Plaschke studied in Prague and afterwards in Dresden, and made his debut with the Dresden Hofoper in 1900 as the Herald in Lohengrin. He was a member of that company for thirty-seven years and took part in the premieres of five operas by Richard Strauss, appearing as the First Nazarene in Salome, as Count Waldener in Arabella, as Pöschel in Feuersnot, Altair in Die ägyptische Helena and Morosus in Die schweigsame Frau. Among other roles created by Plaschke was that of Arcesius in Eugen d’Albert’s opera Die Toten Augen, the premiere of which was featured in our exhibition of September 2016.
D’Albert : Die Toten Augen. Vocal score. Berlin, 1913. Design by Ilna Ewers-Wunderwald. Composed in 1912-13, the work’s premiere at the Dresden Hofoper was delayed by the onset of war until 1916. Elizabeth Forbes in Grove Online notes that ‘its rather heavy mixture of mysticism, symbolism and realism, was only moderately successful.’ She describes it as the ‘most Wagnerian of all d’Albert’s stage works’, deriving ‘much of its style from Parsifal.’
In 1911 Plaschke married Eva von der Osten, the soprano who created the role of Octavian in Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. They both took part in the 1914 production of Parsifal at Covent Garden, Eva singing the role of Kundry, and Friedrich that of Amfortas. He was described as ‘strongly dramatic’, and a ‘picturesque figure’ who ‘sang with distinction’, by The Standard and The Daily News, whereas The Times thought his singing ‘robust rather than imaginative’, though ‘his tone was admirable in many passages of his two great scenes.’ We reproduce the programme here:
The programme for the second performance of Parsifal at the Royal Opera House in London on 4th February, 1914, conducted by Artur Bodarsky, with Friedrich Plaschke as Amfortas and his wife Eva von der Osten as Kundry.
Plaschke was also a guest artist at the Bayreuth Festival and, later in his career, toured the USA with the German Opera Company. He retired from the Dresden Hofoper in 1937 following Eva’s death in 1936, and died in Prague in 1952.
An extract of Plaschke singing Hans Sachs in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg can be found on Youtube: Gut’n Abend, Meister (Elisabeth Böhm van Endert and Friedrich Plaschke)