Grobe, Donald (Roth)

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Grobe, Donald (Roth)

Grobe, Donald (Roth), American tenor; b. Ottawa, 111., Dec. 16, 1929; d. Berlin, April 1, 1986. He attended the Marines Coll. of Music in N.Y. and also received vocal coaching from Robert Long, Martial Singher, Robert Weede, and Marguerite von Winterfeldt. In 1952 he made his operatic debut as Borsa in Rigoletto in Chicago, and then sang in musicals, on television, and in concerts in N.Y. After singing opera in Krefeld/Monchengladbach (1956-57) and Hannover (1957-60), he was a member of the Berlin Deutsche Oper, where he created the roles of Wilhelm in Henze’s Der Junge Lord (1965) and Arundel in Fortner’s Elisabeth Tudor (1972); in 1970, was made a Kammersanger. He also appeared at the Hamburg State Opera (1958-61; 1966-75) and the Bavarian State Opera in Munich (from 1967). On Nov. 22, 1968, he made his Metropolitan Opera debut in N.Y. as Froh in Das Rheingold. His other roles included Ferrando, Eisenstein, Hoffmann, Aiwa in Lulu, and Flamand in Capriccio

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire