Schack, Benedikt (Emanuel)

Schack, Benedikt (Emanuel), Bohemian-bom Austrian tenor and composer; b. Mirotitz (baptized), Feb. 7, 1758; d. Munich, Dec. 10, 1826. He began his training with his father, a school teacher; after further studies in Stare Sedlo and Svatá Hora, he continued his training as a chorister at the Prague Cathedral (1773–75); then went to Vienna, where he received lessons in singing from Karl Frieberth, and also studied medicine and philosophy. He became Kapellmeister to Prince Heinrich von Schönaich-Carolath in Silesia in 1780; became a member of Schikaneder’s traveling theater troupe in 1786, and went with it to Vienna, where he was its principal tenor at the Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden (from 1789). He was a close friend of Mozart, who wrote the role of Tamino for him; his wife, Elisabeth (née Weinhold) Schack, appeared as the third Lady in the first perf. of Die Zauberflöte. If contemporary accounts are to be trusted, it was Schack who sang passages from the Mozart Requiem for the dying composer. After a sojourn in Graz (1793–96), he went to Munich as a member of the Hoftheater; having lost his voice, he was pensioned about 1814. Mozart wrote piano variations (K. 613) on an aria from Schack’s opera Die verdeckten Sachen. Among Schack’s theatrical pieces, the following were performed in Vienna: Der dumme Gärtner aus dem Gebirge (July 12, 1789), Die wiener Zeitung (Jan. 12, 1791), Die Antwort auf die Frage (Dec. 16, 1792), and Die beiden Nannerin (July 26, 1794).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire