A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Sucher, Josef

by George Grove

SUCHER, Josef, born at Döbör, Eisenburg, Hungary, Nov. 23, 1844, was brought up in the Löwenburg Convict at Vienna, as a chorister in the Hofkapelle, which he joined on the same day with Hans Richter, the conductor. On completing his course at the Convict he began to study law, but soon threw it aside, worked at counterpoint with Sechter, and adopted music as his profession. Beginning as sub-conductor of a Singing Society in Vienna, he advanced to be 'Repetitor' of the solo singers at the Imperial Court Opera, and conductor at the Comic Opera, and in 1876 went to Leipzig as conductor of the City Theatre. In the following year he married Fräulein Rosa Hasselbeck, the then prima donna of the same house. She belongs to Velburg in the Palatinate, and is the daughter of one musician and the niece of another. Her first engagement was at Treves. Thence she went to Königsberg and thence to Berlin and Danzig, where she was engaged by her future husband for Leipzig. From Leipzig in 1879 husband and wife went to Hamburg, where they are settled as conductor and prima donna. They visited England in 1882, and Mme. Sucher proved her eminent qualities both as a singer and an actress by the extraordinary range of parts in which she appeared at the German opera at Drury Lane—Euryanthe; Senta; Elisabeth; Elsa; and Isolde. Her husband produced a 'Scene' or Cantata entitled 'Waldfräulein' ('The wood maiden') for soli, chorus, and orchestra, at the Richter Concert of June 5. Composition is no novelty to Heir Sucher; even in his chorister days we hear of songs, masses, cantatas, and overtures, one of which, to an opera called 'Ilse,' was brought forward at a concert in Vienna in 1873. One of his best-known published works is a Liedercyclus entitled 'Ruheort.' [App. p.797 "Add that Frau Sucher gained great renown by her singing of Isolde at Bayreuth in 1886. In 1887 her husband was appointed to the post of conductor at the Hofoper at Berlin, she remaining at Hamburg to fulfil her engagement."]

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