Wolfram Humperdinck

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Family

German opera director, playwright, dramaturge, teacher and biographer, the only son of the composer Engelbert Humperdinck and his wife Hedwig, nee Taxer (1862-1916). He was the godson of Cosima Wagner. After graduating high school he first studied painting and sculpture at the College of Fine Arts in Berlin, before he moved to the HMT Leipzig, where he graduated in music and directing. In 1921 Humperdinck became the opera director at the Landestheater in Neustrelitz. Here his father died in the same year after a stroke, after he had attended the rehearsals and the premiere of Freischütz as staged by Wolfram. After further positions as an opera director at the National Theater Weimar, the Landestheater Oldenburg, the Stadttheater Hagen, the Städtischen Bühnen Wuppertal and at the Königsberg Opera House, he took over in 1933 the positions of the chief playwright, dramaturge and deputy director at the Leipzig Opera. In 1941, Wolfram Humperdinck was elected to succeed Hanns Schulz-Dornburg as director of the Städtische Bühnen in Kiel. He then was a drama teacher and director at the State Theater in Siegburg, and from 1952 to 1959 was Oberspielleiter at the Landestheater Detmold and a lecturer in the subjects of dramaturgy and opera direction at the Northwest German Music Academy there. Humperdinck, who took over the archives at the Siegburg Humperdinck Museum after 1945, also fulfilled guest commitments in Vienna, New York, Bayreuth, Berlin, Paris and 1960 in Tokyo. Humperdinck excelled in particular with productions of Wagner operas. In 1922 Wolfram Humperdinck married Gabriele Meissner (1901-1984), with whom he had three children. Their daughter Eva (b. 1925, later also Sister Maria Evamaris) received her doctorate in musicology and published the catalog raisonné and part of her grandfather's correspondence. Wolfram Humperdinck wrote a biography of his father, Engelbert Humperdinck : Das Leben meines Vaters (Kramer, Frankfurt am Main, 1965). Humperdinck died in Bad Neuenahr on 16 April 1985 two weeks before his 92nd birthday. Link to Wikipedia biography (German)