Albert Niemann

Wagner's first Siegmund, and the heldentenor who carried the Wagner repertory to America. He trained at Dessau under Fritz Schneider and Albert Nusch, and later in Paris with Gilbert Duprez, rising from the Dessau chorus in 1849 through Stuttgart, Königsberg and Stettin to Hannover in 1854. He sang Tannhäuser at the Paris premiere of 1861, joined the Berlin Opera in 1866 and stayed twenty-two years, and created Siegmund at the first Bayreuth festival in 1876. At the Metropolitan Opera he sang in the first American Tristan in 1886 and the first American Götterdämmerung two years later.