Hermann Prey

[2] He studied voice at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin and won the prize of the Frankfurt contest of the Hessischer Rundfunk in 1952.

He began to sing in song recitals and made his operatic debut the next year with the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden in Bad Salzschlirf (Moruccio in Eugen d'Albert's Tiefland).

He sang frequently at the Metropolitan Opera between 1960 and 1970 (and as late as the early 1990s), and made his Bayreuth debut in 1965 as Wolfram (Tannhäuser), returning there 1966–67, 1981–84 and 1986.

His virtuoso agility and great comic acting made him an obvious choice for numerous productions of Mozart's and Rossini's operas in the 1970s.

In 1972 he performed as Figaro in Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's television film of Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia with Teresa Berganza as Rosina, Luigi Alva as Almaviva and conductor Claudio Abbado.

Starting in 1982, he taught at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, and he wrote an autobiography which was translated as First Night Fever: The Memoirs of Hermann Prey (ISBN 0-7145-3998-8).

Pianists who collaborated with Hermann Prey in recitals and/or recordings of Lied repertoire include Karl Engel, Gerald Moore, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Leonard Hokanson, Helmut Deutsch, Friedrich Gulda, Jörg Demus, Walter Klien and Michael Endres.