Category: portraiture

Vangelis Kyris

 

Photography by Vangelis Kyris

Born in Athens, Greece, Vangelis Kyris started his multi-faceted career as the fashion editor of Gynaika, one of Greece’s top women’s popular magazines. Recognized for his artistic vision, he began his photographic work through collaborations with Vogue, Elle Magazine, Marie Clare, and Lacoste, which led to international projects with Puma and Nina Ricci.

Vangelis Kyris’ body of work includes not only fashion editorials but also celebrity portraits, including those of Woody Allen, model Gisele Bundchen, actress Jerry Hall, and French electronic-composer Jean Michel Jarre. He participated in Georgio Armani’s 2004 book “Facce da Sport (Faces in Sport)” and in the 2016 museum-digital archive project entitled “Emotions of the Athletic Body” held at the Armani/Silos fashion art museum in Milan.

Religion, nature in its different geographical locations, and the perplexed emotions of human beings in its varied forms are mixed with Vangelis Kyris’ obsession for beauty to form the themes behind his  photographic works. To these works, he adds a sensibility to the forms and culture of Hellenic civilization, often paying tribute in his photographs to Greek painter Yannis Tsarouchis.

One of Vangelis Kyris’ most recent series is his collaboration with Bulgarian photographer and dancer Anotoli Georgiev, entitled “A Voyage Within”. This portrait series is seen through the context of a global travel, starting from Asia and Africa and ending in Greece. The creative portraits take their roots form the local traditions, are printed on canvas, and hand-embellished by Georgiev to give them a third-dimension through texture and volume. With this addition, contemporary photography joins with the traditional methods of tea-dyeing and thread corrosion.

“The Voyage Within” website featuring the works of Vangelis Kyris and Anatoli Georgiev, curated by Erica Vassiliou, can be found at: https://avoyagewithin.com/about-us/

Rotimi Fani-Kayode

The Photographic Work of Rotimi Fani-Kayode

Photographer Rotimi Fani-Kayode, the son of a chieftain of Ife, the ancestral capital of the Yoruba people, was born in Lagos, Nigeria in 1955, He moved at the age of eleven, with his family to Brighton, England, in order to escape the Nigerian Civil War. Fani-Kayode studied at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and later at the Pratt Institute in New York, where he earned his MFA in 1983. 

After graduating, Fani-Kayode returned to England, settling permanently, to pursue a career in photography.  A prominent figure in the Black British art scene, he was a founding member and the first chairman of Autograph ABP, the Association of Black Photographers, in 1968. During the height of the AIDS crisis and in response to the homophobia in both England and his home country of Nigeria, Fani-Kayode photographed images that called attention to the politics of race, dignified queer black culture and homoerotic desire, and explored cultural differences and identity.

Using ancestral rituals and multi-layered symbolism joined with archetypal motifs from both African and European cultures, Fani-Kayode depicted the black male body as the focal point to probe the boundaries of erotic and spiritual fantasy, and sexual and cultural differences. He saw his work as a way to explore the position of the black body in the imagery of the Western cultures and to contest the narrowness of the Yoruba mindset in terms of homosexuality. Fani-Kayode , using the dramatic lighting of chiaroscuro and the transformation of Yoruba mythological symbols and rituals, presented intimate moments of queer sexuality as a means of personal and political survival.

Rotimi Fani-Kayode’s photographs have been exhibited internationally since 1985, with numerous solo exhibitions in London, Boston, New York, and Cape Town. In 2003, his work was featured in the African Pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale and, in 2011, in ARS 11 at the Kiasma-Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Finland. Fani-Kayode’s work is represented in the collections of numerous institutions and private collectors including the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Walther Family Foundation, Harvard University’s Hutchins Center, and the Kiasma-Museum of Contemporary Art, among others.

One of the most significant names in the history of black photography, Rotimi Fani-Kayode’s career was cut short by his untimely death at the age of thirty-four in December 1989. Many of his photographs were created in collaboration with his late partner Alex Hirst and are collected in the posthumous 1996 publication “Rotimi Fani-Kayode and Alex Hirst: Photographs”. His work is represented by Autograph ABP, London.

“My identity has been constructed from my own sense of otherness, whether cultural, racial or sexual. The three aspects are not separate within me. Photography is the tool by which I feel most confident in expressing myself. It is photography therefore – Black, African, homosexual photography – which I must use not just as an instrument, but as a weapon if I am to resist attacks on my integrity and, indeed, my existence on my own terms.  — Rotimi Fani-Kayode, “Traces of Ecstasy”, Ten-8, Number 28, 1988.

Note: All photographic work shown was a collaborative effort by Rotimi Fani-Kayode and Alex Hirst.  Images reblogged with thanks to Autograph ABP, London.

Yannis Tsarouchis

The Paintings of Yannis Tsarouchis

Yannis Tsarouchis is one of a group of twentieth-century Greek artists who portrayed and defined modern Greek identity. A sensual painter influenced by French Impressionism, Tsarouchis is a significant gay artist who painted images of vulnerable men and occasionally strong women.

Born in January of 1910 in Piraeus, Greece, Yannis Tsarouchis initially trained in the studio of Byzantine artist Fotis Kontoglou, an influential Greek modernist who introduced him to Byzantine iconography. He later studied at the Athens School of Fine Art, graduating in 1935, The major influence on Tsarouchis’ work, however, came from a trip to Paris, Istanbul, and Italy in the mid-1930s that exposed him to the bohemian lifestyle and both Renaissance and Impressionist art.

Tsarouchis’ work moved in two main directions: toward the orientalist and sensual, with strong influences from Matisse, and toward the ancient Greek ideal as expressed by the Renaissance and the Baroque movements. In doing so, Tsarouchis played a pivotal role, alongside his contemporaries, in portraying and shaping modern Greek identity.

Returning to a war-torn Greece in 1936, Tsarouchis become a soldier in the Greco-Italian war in 1940. With a more political and humanist perspective after his service, he  began painting scenes of young men who were preparing to defend their homeland from the rise of Fascist Italy. Tsarouchis’ depiction of the soldiers and sailors was controversial; some of his exhibits were taken down by censors, who saw his work as unpatriotic and  degrading to the Greek male image. 

Tsarouchis’ paintings of soldiers and sailors he admired captured not only a Greek identity, but also a gay awareness. Transforming Rodin’s bronze statue into an icon for Greek culture, he painted his 1936 “The Thinker”, showing a modern young Greek sitting on a cafe stool, a cigarette in hand, with a faraway look in his eye. Among Tsarouchis’ other paintings are:  the 1939 “Young Man Posing as an Olympic Statue”; “Sailor with Coffee Cup” painted in 1954; and the 1956 “Forgotten Guard”.

Yannis Tsarouchis established in 1949, along with other Greek artists including sculptor Nikos Nikolaou and seascape painter Panayiotis Tetsis, the “Armos” art group which worked to promote Greek traditional painting. In 1951 he had exhibitions in Paris and London and participated in the 1958 Venice Biennale. Tsarouchis moved to Paris in 1967 in a self-imposed exile to.wait out the years of military dictatorship in Greece. 

During this exile, Tsarouchis designed theater sets for productions at Milan’s La Scala opera house, the Greek National Theater, the Dallas Opera, and London’s Covent Gardens, as well as the annual Avignon Art Festival in France. He also designed sets and costumes for films by Jules Dassin and Michael Cacoyannis. After his return to Greece in the middle of the 1970s, he designed an acclaimed operatic set for director Franco Zeffirelli’s production of Italian classical composer Luigi Cherubini’s comedic opera “Médée” at the ancient amphitheater at Epidauros. 

Residing in northern Athens at the age of seventy nine, Yannis Tsarouchis died on July 20th of 1989. The Yannis Tsarouchis Museum, an art collection hosted in the artist’s home in Maroussi, Athens, was officially opened in 1982 in recognition of Tsarouchis’ contributions and respect for Greek culture. Upon the reading of his will and testament, it was found that Tsarouchis bequeathed all his assets to the Yannis Tsarouchis Foundation. 

Note: A more extensive biography of Yannis Tsarouchis and collections of his work can be found at the online site of the Yannis Tsarouchis Foundation located at: https://tsarouchis.gr/en/

Second Insert Image: Yannis Tsarouchis, “Departure with Oval Mirror”, Detail, 1970, Oil on Canvas, 110 x 209 cm, Yannis Tsarouchis Foundation

Third Insert Image: Yannis Tsarouchis, “Portrait of a Man”, 1976, Oil on Canvas, 51 x 65 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Yannis Tsarouchis, “Sailor”, circa 1970, Oil on Panel, Private collection

Romer Kitching

Paintings by Romer Kitching

Born in London in 1995, painter Romer Kitching began drawing at an early age. From 2015 to 2018, he received his formal education at the Florence Academy of Art, a school which offers classical training in the Realist style. Having been trained daily in the aspects of form, anatomy, and the effects of light, Kitching now paints exclusively from live models.

Romer Kitching currently resides in Cèret, a communal town in the Pyrénées-Orientales department of southern France. Having visited the area from the age of fourteen, he considers it his home and has painted many ‘open air’ landscapes of the area. Painting to capture the different elements of the area, Kitching pays particular attention to the broken light and the dappled shadows in the scene.

Romer Kitching produced a number of academic portraits during his time at the Florence Academy, using live models to increase his skills. In addition to this work, he has painted more intimate, stylized portraits of family members and friends. 

Romer Kitching’s website is located at: https://www.romerkitching.com

Gary Lee

Photographs and Illustration by Gary Lee

Gary Lee is a Larrakia artist, born in 1952 and raised in Darwin, the capital city of the Northern Territory, Australia. An anthropologist, artist, writer and curator, Lee has been an active participant in and promoter of Aboriginal arts since the early 1980s.

Prior to his studies at Sydney College of the Arts, Gary Lee worked alongside Andrew Trewin to produce a line of evening and cocktail wear, incorporating Lee’s Aboriginal designs and sold under the Trewin Lee label. Lee attended a year at Sydney College majoring in glass and painting, but left to pursue a career in fashion design. After a few years in Sydney, Lee returned to the Northern Territory where he began working as a trainee Aboriginal arts advisor with Chips MacKinolty at Mimi Arts and Crafts in Katherine.

This move brought Gary Lee in contact with a wide range of Aboriginal artists and led to his curating a series of shows of Aboriginal crafts and art. Working at Mimi Arts inspired him to undertake studies, firstly as a Cultural Heritage Management student at Canberra’s College of Advanced Education and later at the Australian National University, earning a BA with Honors in Anthropology. Lee also undertook internships at the National Gallery of Australia, becoming its first Aboriginal intern, and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. 

After five years of study and employment as a project manager for the Australia Council for the Arts, Gary Lee returned to his homeland as a Larrakia anthropologist in a research position at the Northern Land Council. During this time, he wrote a musical play based on his maternal heritage entitled “Keep Him in My Heart: A Larrakia-Filipino Love Story”, which premiered in Darwin and showcased Lee’s skills as writer and fashion designer.  

In 1993, Gary Lee began working in the field of photography with his series “Nice Colored Boys”, an allusion to Australian film maker Tracey Moffatt’s classic short film “Nice Colored Girls”. It began as a project to reconnect Lee with the regions of Nepal and India, where he traveled in the 1970s. The film was designed to celebrate the physicality of the men in the area, to subvert Western male beauty stereotypes, and to explore nuances of Aboriginal art and identity.

In 1998, Lee’s street photography, portrait series “Bablu, Milk Boy” was published in Australia’s oldest and most respected photography magazine, Photofile. At the suggestion of Photofile editor Alasdair Forster, Lee produced the “Skin” series, placing himself in the frame alongside men from Nepal and India. Photographs from this series were later shown in the 2008 “More Than My Skin” exhibition, which focused on Aboriginal male photographers, at the Campbelltown Arts Center.

Beginning in 2005, Gary Lee’s photography came to reflect a combination of contemporary and historical Larrakia subjects. The catalyst for this was partly his involvement as co-curator in an exhibition celebrating Billiamook, who was a key Larrakia figure in the region’s contact history. In this exhibition Lee displayed a portrait of his nephew, Shannon, alongside a portrait of Billiamook by the colonial photographer Paul Foelsche, in which both sixteen year old boys exude physical prowess.

Lee’s venture into portraits incorporating his own family paralleled his work into other Aboriginal portraits, becoming an extension of his “Nice Colored Boys” series. To some extent, he had already been doing this as a way of documenting Aboriginal gay and transgender communities. From 2004, however, he began a discrete, ongoing series called “Nymgololo”, a Larrakia word for young man or bachelor,  which focused on Aboriginal men in Darwin. 

In October 2007, Gary Lee was in Canberra for the opening of the “Culture Warriors” exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia when he suffered a life-threatening stroke. While undergoing extensive rehabilitation in 2008, Lee experienced his busiest period of exhibition commitments including his very first solo exhibition, “Maast Maast”, at Darwin’s 24HR Art NT Centre for Contemporary Art. This exhibition was largely a selection of past work from the “Nice Colored Boys”, “Skin” and “Nymgolofo” series.

Gary Lee’s work has been published in books, art journals and magazines in Australia and abroad. His work can be seen in many major collections including: the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra; the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in Darwin; and the art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth.

Note: A book of note is author Dino Hodge’s “Did You Meet Any Malagas (Men)”: A Homosexual History of Australia’s Tropical Capital”, published in 1993. It is a collection of oral histories intended to tell a gay history of the Larrakia territory, recognizing local issues of sexuality, gender, colonialism, and race. It should be noted that Hodges’ friend Gary Lee was the first indigenous person to collaborate with the Northern Territory AIDS Council.

Hugh Ramsay

Hugh Ramsay, “A Student of the Latin Quarter”, 1901, Oil on Canvas on Board, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Insert: Hugh Ramsay, “Self-Portrait in White Jacket”, 1901-02, Oil on Canvas, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Hugh Ramsay was an accomplished Australian artist whose portrait paintings achieved success in Australia and in France before his untimely death at the age of twenty-eight. Born in Scotland in 1877, he relocated with his family to Melbourne, Australia, in 1878. Ramsay enrolled at the National Gallery of Victoria School in 1894 under the tutelage of impressionist Frederick McCubbin and artist Bernard Hall, who tutored him on the importance of tone through careful study of Spanish master-painter Diego Valázquez.

After unsuccessfully applying for the 1899 Traveling Art Scholarship, Ramsay was encouraged by portraitist John Longstaff to travel to Europe in September of 1900, which he financed by selling his paintings through the Art Union sales and with support from his older brother. Ramsay arrived in Paris in January of 1901, where he enrolled at the Académie Colarossi and was exposed to the Louvre collections and exhibitions of the work of his American and French contemporaries.

Hugh Ramsay’s 1901 “Portrait of James S Macdonald” was accepted by the conservative Paris Salon and, in 1902, three portraits and a still life were accepted by the progressive Société Nationale des Beaux Arts and displayed favorably. With his reputation increasing, Ramsay’s art connections permitted him access to the important social circles in London, particularly that of opera singer Dame Nellie Melba, who gave him a commission for a portrait.

Unfortunately, due to long hours spent working in the impoverished conditions of his studio and living quarters, Ramsay contracted tuberculosis and was advised to return to the warmer climates of Australia. Forced to abandon his international career, he returned home to Melbourne in August of 1902. In December, Dame Melba, on tour in Australia, organized Ramsay’s first and only solo exhibition at Myoora house in the Melbourne suburb of Toorak.

Despite his worsening condition, Hugh Ramsay continued to paint and exhibit at the Victorian Artists Society. The last paintings he produced are considered among his greatest, including “The Sisters”, a portrait of his own two sisters, seated and dressed in white, and painted in 1904. Gradually becoming weaker, Hugh Ramsay died at his family’s estate, Clydebank, in Essendon, Victoria, on March 5th 1906, a few weeks before his twenty-ninth year. 

Ramsay’s realist portraits were characterized by Velazquez-inspired tonalism, prevalent in Melbourne during the 1890s. His quick and confident handling of oil lent his portraits a wonderful candidness which were indebted to the influence of American painter John Singer Sargent. Ramsay also worked within other genres,  including narrative and mythological subjects, still life, urban scenes and landscapes.

A memorial exhibition of Hugh Ramsay’s work was held at the Fine Arts Society in 1906 and a retrospective at the national Gallery of Victoria in 1943. Ramsay’s achievements overseas and impact locally are remarkable given his short period of activity and relative inexperience. The fact that he had not yet matured fully affirms his exceptional artistic talents.

More of Hugh Ramsay’s work can be found at the National Gallery of Australia site located at: https://nga.gov.au/ramsay/works.cfm

Haruki Murakami: “. . .From the Distant Past”

 

Photographer Unknown, From the Distant Past, Photo Shoot

“Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through is now like something from the distant past. We’re so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about everyday, too many new things we have to learn. But still, no matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone.” 

—Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

Frank Yamrus

Photography by Frank Yamrus

Born in 1958, Frank Yamrus attended Wilkes University, earning his BA in 1980, and Drexel University in Philadelphia, earning his MBA in 1986. A sensitive observer of his life and surroundings, he works in series to produce intimate, introspective photographs, creating suggestive visual narratives focused primarily on himself and his place in the world. 

In series form, Yamrus has addressed environmental issues in his carefully composed photographic still lifes of flowers, blocks of ice, and plastic water bottles. He frequently shoots self-portraits amid the natural landscapes that formed his experiences, allowing the insertion of himself into the scene to serve as proxies for his emotions. 

Frank Yamrus leaves his open-ended images largely unexplained, explaining that his photography has always been about process and not about resolution. Two of his previously shot series are the 1994 figurative-nature “Primitive Behavior” and the 2000  “Rapture Series” of facial- expressive portraits. In 2008, to mark the milestone of his fiftieth birthday, Yamrus shot ” I Feel Lucky”, a poetic series of self-portraits, at once overt and ambiguous, which conveyed the pivotal experiences that shaped his identity.

C. S. Lewis: “What is Blinding is Clarity Itself”

Photographer Unknown, Clarity Itself

“He had no faintest conception till that very hour of how they would look, and even doubted their existence. But when he saw them he knew that he had always known them and realized what part each one of them had played at many an hour in his life when he had supposed himself alone, so that now he could say to them, one by one, not ‘Who are you?’ but ‘So it was you all the time.’ All that they were and said at this meeting woke memories. The dim consciousness of friends about him which had haunted his solitudes from infancy was now at last explained; that central music in every pure experience which had always just evaded memory was now at last recovered…He saw not only Them; he saw Him. This animal, this thing begotten in a bed, could look on Him. What is blinding, suffocating fire to you is now cool light to him, is clarity itself, and wears the form of a man.” 

—C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Gus Green Van Sant, Jr: “My Own Private Idaho”

Bruce Weber, Promotional Photo Shoot for “My Own Private Idaho”

These two images, showing River Phoenix with Michael Parker and with Rodney Harvey, were taken by Bruce Weber during a promotional photo shoot in 1991 for director Gus Van Sant’s early 1991 masterpiece “My Own Private Idaho”.

Born in July of 1952, Gus Green Van Sant, Jr. is an American screenwriter, film director, photographer, painter and author who has produced acclaimed independent and mainstream films. His films typically contain themes of marginalized subcultures, particularly homosexuality. Van Sant is one of the prominent film artists of the New Queer Cinema movement. 

Van Sant made his feature-length directorial debut with his 1985 film “Mala Noche (Bad Night)”, a drama film based on poet Walt Curtis’s autobiographical novel of the same name.  His second feature, released in 1989, was the highly acclaimed “Drugstore Cowboy”, which earned him Best Director from the National Society of Film Critics. Van Sant followed this success with the a series of similarly praised films: the 1991 “My Private Idaho” and the black comedy “To Die For” in 1995. His next two films,  the 1997 drama “Good Will Hunting”, and the biographical film “Milk” in 2008, were nominated by the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director. 

Note: You will find more information on Van Sant’s film “Malo Noche” at: https://ultrawolvesunderthefullmoon.blog/2015/07/09/mala-noche-directed-by-gus-van-sant-mala-noche/

Kyle McMillin

 

Kyle McMillin, “Los Primeros Cuatros”, 2020, Four Wet-Collodion Tintypes, Each 10 x 12.7 cm

These four portrait tintypes by Kyle McMillin were taken in Tacoma, Washington on July 27, 2020. They depict, in image order, Aloysious, Jesse, Kreg, and Kyle.

The wet-collodion process is an early photographic technique invented in 1851 by English sculptor and inventor Frederick Scott Archer. The process involved adding a soluble iodide to a solution of cellulose nitrate, known as collodion, and coating a glass plate with the mixture. In the darkroom, the plate was immersed in a solution of silver nitrate to form silver iodide.

This glass plate, still wet, was exposed in the camera and then developed by pouring a solution of pyrogallic acid over it. The image was fixed, originally, with a strong solution of sodium thiosulfate, for which potassium cyanide was later substituted. Immediate developing and fixing were  required in this process because, after the collodion film had dried, it became waterproof, preventing the reagent solutions from penetrating the film. This wet-collodion process was valued for the clarity and  level of detail it allowed.

A later modification of the process introduced in the 1850s, the ambrotype was a developed and fixed negative on a glass plate, which when viewed by reflected light against a black background, appears as to be a positive image. The clear areas look black, and the exposed, opaque areas appear relatively light. The glass plates were either backed with black velvet, or were coated on one side of the plate with black varnish.

During the 1860s, the ambrotype was superseded by the tintype or ferrotype, a photograph made by by creating a direct positive on a thin sheet of metal coated with a dark lacquer or enamel and used as the support for the for the photographic emulsion. Because the lacquered iron support was resilient and did not need drying, a tintype could be developed, fixed, and handed to the customer only a few minutes after the picture had been taken. The tintype became very popular in the 1860s and 1870s, being less fragile than the ambrotype and “instantly” available.

The artist’s site is located at: https://mcmillin.tumblr.com

Kyle McMillan’s studio, The Red Room Tintype Studio, is located at:  https://www.redroomtintype.me

Dick Hendrik Ket

Paintings by Dick Hendrik Ket

Born in 1902 in the small port town of Den Helder, The Netherlands, Dick Ket was a magic realist painter. He was born with a serious heart defect, probably a symptom of Fallot, incurable at that time and causing insufficient nourishment of tissues and organs. 

In his childhood, Ket was encouraged by two teachers who appreciated his artistic talent. His drawing teacher, Johan C. Kerkemeijer directed him toward the techniques of oil painting. His science teacher Henri Adrien Naber, an author and theosophist, encouraged him to look into the relationship between geometry and mysticism. 

After studying art at the Kunstoefening Arnhem Academy from 1922 to 1925, Ket could no longer travel, becoming debilitated by chronic fatigue and growing phobias. He lived in seclusion with his parents in the small town of Bennekom, not venturing out of the house until after 1930. Ket’s exposure, through reproductions, to the art of painter Neue Sachlichkeit in 1929 led him to concentrate his work in the magic realist style.

Housebound by his illness, Dick Ket painted still lifes and self portraits. His meticulously composed still lifes are always centered on the same themes and are often composed of the same objects: empty bowls, eggs, bottles, newspapers and musical instruments. These objects are arranged in different angles to each other, painted as viewed from above, and seen casting strong shadows. 

During the period from 1930 to 1940, Dick Ket’s health progressively deteriorated, leading to his early death at age thirty-seven in September of 1940. Over the course of his career, Dick Ket produced approximately one hundred-forty paintings, a third of which were self portraits. Among the museums containing Ket’s work in their collections are the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Arnhem Museum, and the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam. 

Top Insert Image: Dick Ket, “Self Portrait”, 1935, Conté Crayon and White Crayon on Paper, 113 x 75 cm, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

Bottom Insert Image: Dick Ket, “Self Portrait”, Date Unknown, Conté Crayon on Paper

Brian Catling: “Gravity Filled the Moment”

Photographers Unknown, The Faces of Man: Photo Set Nine

“One solitary tear crept through the scars of his face, through the diagrams of constellations and the incised maps of influence and dominion. A liquid without a name, it being made of so many emotions and conflicts, each cancelling the other out until only salt and gravity filled the moment and moved down through his expression.” 

—-Brian Catling, The Vorrh

Franz Betz: Music History

Photographer Unknown, “Franz Betz in His Role as Wotan”, 1876

Born in March of 1835 at the Rhine River city of Mainz, Germany, Franz Betz was a bass-baritone opera singer known for his performances in operas by Richard Wagner. He received his training in the city of Karlsruhe, home of the Baden State Theatre opera house. Betz made his debut, at the age of twenty-one, in 1856 at the Court Theater of Hanover in Wagner’s “Lohengrin”, part of the “Knight of the Swan”legend, but most recognizable for the”Bridal Chorus”, still played at weddings today.

Framz Betz’s successful performance in 1859 at the Berlin State Opera, singing the role of Don Carlo in Giuseppe Verdi’s “Emani”, resulted in a permanent contract with the company and his becoming one of Wagner’s most trusted singers. He sang the role of Hans Sachs in the world premier of Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger von Nümberg” at Munich in 1868, eventually singing the role over one hundred times.

Im May of 1872, Betz was one of the four soloists in the performance of “Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony” to mark the laying of the foundation stone for the Bayreuth Festival Theater, built by Richard Wagner for the sole use of his works. At the Beyreuth Theater in 1876, Betz sang the role of Wotan in the operas “Das Rheingold” and “Die Ring des Nibelungen”.

Franz Betz continued to sing lyric and lyric-dramatic roles well into his career as a singer of Wagner’s operas. For instance, he sang, in the same season of 1863, both the role of Telramund, a heavy dramatic part, and the lyric part of Valentin in “Faust”. Betz’s voice deepened as he grew older; and in consequence, Wagner added to his operas the role of König Marke, a lyrical bass role without a low tessitura and, in the same year, the role of Wotan. Betz’s enormous repertoire ranged from the roles of Don Giovanni and Wolfram, through Pizarro and Posa, to the roles of Holländer, Amonasro, Sachs and Wotan, expanding finally to Falstaff in 1894. 

During the period from 1882 to 1890, Betz held the position of president of the German trade union for stage artists, technicians and administrative staff, the Genossenschaft Deutscher Bühren-Angelhöger. Although singing in a few London concerts in 1882 and 1889, he never sang elsewhere outside of Germany. Franz Betz died in Berlin on the 11th of August in 1900 and is buried at the Protestant Wilhelm Memorial Cemetery in the Westend district of Berlin.

Note: The photographs show Franz Betz as Wotan, bearded and with shield,  in Richard Wagner’s opera “Die Ring des Nibelungen” performed in Bayreuth. The photo card is entitled Costume Portraits of the Bayreuther Festival Thater, and was published by Joseph Albert, Munich, in 1876. 

Top Insert Image: Loescher & Petsch, “Franz Betz”, circa 1870, Cardstock Photo, 8.6 x 5.5 cm, Kunstbibliothek, Berlin

Bottom Insert Image: Verlog von J. Albert, “Franz Betz as Wotan”, Costüm Portraits, 1876, Card Stock Photo, Berlin