Max Staegemann

Staegemann chose instead to attend the Dresdner Konservatorium, where the actor Heine gave him lessons in dramatic performance.

„The artist quickly won the sympathy of the theatre audience with his sympathetic, sonorous voice, his lively performance, as well as his witty, deeply thought-out acting.

His star role as a singer, however, was that of Don Giovanni in Mozart's eponymous opera „eine wahre Meisterleistung in Gesang und Spiel.

Under Staegemann's direction and with conductor Emil Paur, the German premiere of Carmen by Georges Bizet took place on 26 October 1879.

Louis Köhler and Alexander Wyneken wrote glowing reviews, which initiated the worldwide triumph of the opera, which had failed in Paris.

In 1882, Staegemann, who had been appointed Kingly Prussian Kammersänger, was offered the position of Generalintendant to take over the lease of the Städtische Bühnen in Leipzig.

In 1903, Eisenberg judged Staegemann's work in Leipzig: "He has succeeded in assigning this theatre a very first place among the art institutes of Germany.

In his twenty years as director, Staegmann did much to establish Leipzig's reputation as an important metropolis of musical culture in Europe.

[4] Stägemann's appearance, the fine head with the noble features, surrounded by raven-black hair, the nature of his voice particularly enable him to represent demonic figures.

The fine tact with which Stägemann knows how to use this timbre here, that timbre there, how he structures every little sentence and how he increases the means with all clarity according to the sense of the person to be presented, according to the situation, in harmony with the gesture and the posture, which everywhere betray an actor of the first rank, The planned nature of the whole composition, as well as the execution of the smallest parts, makes him a great artist, which he will be even more certain of as soon as, with Leipzig at the age of the passing of the years, a youthful haste, which now and then appears to be quiet, has disappeared from his performance and appearance.