Zednik, Heinz

views updated

Zednik, Heinz

Zednik, Heinz, Austrian tenor; b. Vienna, Feb. 21, 1940. He was a student of Marga Wissmann at the Vienna Cons. In 1963 he made his operatic debut as Trabuco in La forza del destino in Graz. In 1965 he became a member of the Vienna State Opera, where he created the role of Kalb in Einem’s Kabale und Liebe in 1976. His guest engagements took him to such operatic centers as Munich, Paris, Nice, Moscow, and Montreal. In 1970 he made his first appearance at the Bayreuth Festival as David in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and he returned there to sing Loge and Mime in the centenary Ring cycle in 1976. In 1980 he was made an Austrian Kammersänger. For his first appearance at the Salzburg Festival (1981), he sang Bardolfo in Falstaff. On Sept. 22, 1981, he made his Metropolitan Opera debut in N.Y. as Mime in Das Rheingold. He returned to Salzburg to create the roles of the Regisseur in Berio’s Un re in ascolto (1984) and Hadank in Penderecki’s Die schwarze Maske (1986). In 1987 he appeared as Pedrillo at the Metropolitan Opera, and returned there during the 1989-90 season as Mime. In 1996 he sang Baron Laur in Weill’s Silbersee at the London Promenade Concerts.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire

More From encyclopedia.com