Engelbert Humperdinck

Having weathered changing musical fashions and the appropriation of his name by an easy-listening 1960s crooner, Engelbert Humperdinck is today regarded as the most notable German opera composer between Wagner and Richard Strauss. Born in Siegburg in 1854, he attended Cologne Conservatory, with further studies at Munich and Berlin. The early 1880s found him in Bayreuth, where he worked with Wagner on the first production of Parsifal. His own music gained little exposure until he expanded the songs for a Christmas play by his sister into the opera Hänsel und Gretel which, first staged at Weimar in 1893, soon became popular throughout Europe and America. None of his later operas equalled this success, but Königskinder was highly praised by Puccini at its New York premiere in 1910. From 1900 Humperdinck gave a masterclass in Berlin, where his students included Kurt Weill. He died in Neustrelitz in 1921.