Werner Hollweg
was considered in the 1970s one of the leading Mozart interpreters, celebrating triumphs particularly in the title role of La clemenza di Tito at the Salzburg Festival (in this context, he called his son, born at the time, Titus). He himself was born in Solingen in 1936, receiving his singing training from Frederick Husler in Detmold and Lugano. He had his first stage commitment at the Vienna Chamber Opera in 1962, further commitments taking him initially to Bonn, Gelsenkirchen and Düsseldorf. A succesful audition with Herbert von Karajan opened the doors to all the major opera houses in the world. At the Salzburg Festival, he was acclaimed not only as Titus, but as a Mozart interpreter in general. The conductors who helped to form him most were Karajan, Otto Klemperer and Nikolaus Harnoncourt, in whose Zürich ‘Monteverdi’ cycle (in the production by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle) he played a prominent part. Later, he also worked as a director, before the malicious illness ALS (from which Stephen Hawking also suffered) put an end to his career as a singer. It finally led to his death in Freiburg/Breisgau in 2007.
