When his singing voice was discovered,[2] he studied with Carl Momberg [de] in Braunschweig and Hans-Hermann Nissen and Willi Domgraf-Fassbaender in Munich.
From 1954 to 1965, he worked at the Staatsoper Stuttgart, where he took part in the world premieres of Carl Orff's Comoedia de Christi Resurrectione (1957) and his Oedipus der Tyrann (1959).
[2] He appeared as Don Pizarro in Beethoven's Fidelio, as Kurwenal in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and as Dr. Schön in Alban Berg's Lulu.
[2] He took part in world premieres at the house, as Hoango in Werner Egk's Die Verlobung in San Domingo in 1963,[1] and in works by Günter Bialas, Wolfgang Fortner, Manfred Trojahn and Aribert Reimann, whose writing for voices he found exceptional.
[1] At the Vienna State Opera, he appeared as Pizarro, Holländer, Telramund, Kurwenal, Gunther, Jochanaan, as the Count in Capriccio by Richard Straus, and Leonardo in Fortner's Bluthochzeit, among others.