Ortrun Wenkel


Ortrun Wenkel-Rothe was a German operatic contralto. She notably portrayed the role of Erda in the Bayreuth Jahrhundertring in 1976 and was awarded a Grammy Award as a principal soloist in 1983.

Life and career

Wenkel was born in Buttstädt, Gau Thuringia, on 25 October 1937. She started her studies at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt, Weimar. Following her emigration from East Germany to West Germany, she continued at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts with Paul Lohmann and then with Elsa Cavelti.
She began her career in 1964 as concert and oratorio soloist when she was still a student. Dedicated to Baroque music, she appeared at major international festivals including the English Bach Festival, Festival du Marais, Festival of Flanders, Holland Festival, and for concerts at the Salle Pleyel in Paris, the Royal Festival Hall in London, the Tonhalle in Zürich and the Vienna Musikvereinssaal. In 1971, she made her stage debut at the municipal theatre of Heidelberg in the title role of Glucks Orfeo. In 1975, she became a member of the Bavarian State Opera where she caught the attention of Wolfgang Wagner who immediately engaged her as Erda in the 1976 Bayreuth Festival's Jahrhundertring, celebrating the centenary of both the festival and the first performance of the complete Ring cycle, conducted by Pierre Boulez and staged by Patrice Chéreau, recorded and filmed in 1979 and 1980. For her performance of Erda in Das Rheingold and Siegfried and the First Norn in Götterdämmerung) in this production she was awarded in 1982 a Grammy as a "principal soloist".
Wenkel appeared at many important opera houses of the world including Deutsche Oper Berlin, Palais Garnier in Paris, La Scala in Milan, the Royal Opera House in London, the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, as well as Rome, the opera houses of Stuttgart, Zurich, Geneva, Lisboa, Venice and Prague, among others, concert halls including the Berliner Philharmonie, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and Carnegie Hall in New York. During the 1980s, she appeared repeatedly in Marcel Prawy's TV productions Gute Laune mit Musik and Ihre Melodie. Since her concert debut in 1964, Wenkel was continuously performing, and she worked with many of the most prominent conductors, e. g. Riccardo Chailly, Colin Davis, Christoph von Dohnányi, Christoph Eschenbach, Bernard Haitink, Marek Janowski, Erich Leinsdorf, Gerd Albrecht, Riccardo Muti, Václav Neumann, Seiji Ozawa, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Gabriel Chmura, Michael Hofstetter, Ulf Schirmer and Klaus Tennstedt. Her roles included Fricka and Waltraute in the Ring cycle at the Graz Opera, and Klytämnestra in Elektra by R. Strauss at the Budapest Spring Festival and at the Freiburg Opera, In the 2002/03 season she portrayed the title role in Aribert Reimann's Bernarda Albas Haus in the opera's Swiss premiere at the Bern Theatre, and in 2012 Filipjewna in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin) at the Staatstheater Saarbrücken. In contemporary music, she collaborated with composers Hans Werner Henze, Krzysztof Penderecki and Reimann. Henze composed for her his revision of Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder for alto and chamber orchestra, and she performed the premiere under his direction at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk in 1977. In 1999 she portrayed Magda Schneider in the premiere of Tod und Teufel by Gerd Kühr and Peter Turrini during the Steirischer Herbst in Graz. Wenkel is also renowned for giving recitals around the world, accompanied by pianists including Geoffrey Parsons, Rudolf Jansen, Phillip Moll, Erik Werba, Wilhelm von Grunelius,, Helge Dorsch, Burkhard Schaeffer and Felix-Jany Renz.
Wenkel died in December 2025 after a short illness in Hirschberg-Leutershausen at the age of 88.

Reviews

Selected recordings