Karl Scheidemantel

A German baritone who sang for twenty-five years at Dresden and returned as its director in 1920. Encouraged by Liszt, he studied with Julius Stockhausen and made his 1878 debut at his native Weimar as Wolfram, moving to the Dresden Hofoper in 1886 and singing at Bayreuth in those years. He created Kunrad in Strauss's Feuersnot in 1901 and Faninal in Der Rosenkavalier in 1911, giving his last performance that June as Hans Sachs. Thinking Da Ponte's libretto unworthy of the music, he fitted Così fan tutte with a new text after Calderón, published in 1909 as Die Dame Kobold.