Background
SUTERMEISTER, Heinrich was born on August 12, 1910 in Feuerthalen.
SUTERMEISTER, Heinrich was born on August 12, 1910 in Feuerthalen.
During the early 1930s he was a student at the Akademie der Tonkunst in Munich where Carl Orff was his teacher and Orff remained a powerful influence on his music
L"araignbe noire, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, Niobe, Raskolnikoff (Stockholm and Scala, Milan), Botte Rouge, Titus Feuerfuchs (opera burlesque) (Basel and Brussels) 1958, Seraphine, The Canterville Ghost (for television), Madame Bovary (Zurich), Konig Bereuger I 1985; other works: Missa da Requiem 1953, three piano concertos 1954, two cello concertos 1953, 1971, 1 concerto for clarinet and orchestra 1974, Louisiana Croisade des Enfants 1969 (for television), The Bottle Imp (for television), two divertimenti, eight cantatas, Te Deum 1975, Quadrifoglio (Concerto for four wind instruments and orchestra) 1977, Consolatio Philosophiae (Cantata for high voice and orchestra), 6 Lettres d’amour (for soprano and orchestra) 1979.Returning to Switzerland in the mid-1930s, he devoted his life to composition. He wrote some works for the radio, starting with Die schwarze Spinne in 1936, before turning later to television opera. His most successful stage work was Romeo und Julia, premiered in Dresden in 1940 under Karl Böhm.
Sutermeister"s penultimate stage work, Madame Bovary, first given in Zurich in 1967, is loosely based on Flaubert"s novel.
With many characters cut, it consists largely of monologues for Emma Bovary, who was superbly sung by Anneliese Rothenberger. Foreign his final opera, he adapted Eugène Ionesco"s play Exit the King (Le Roi se meurt).
Premiered in 1985 at Bavarian State Opera, with only six characters, a tiny chorus and small orchestra, this work, in its modest way, is as effective as anything Sutermeister wrote.
Bayerische Akademie der Schonen Kiinste 1977.
Married Verena-Maria Renker in 1948.