Fritz Wunderlich

This is based on a drama by Heinrich von Kleist, and the opera was originally set to premiere on the very day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

When it premiered later that season, it featured Evelyn Lear and Fritz Wunderlich.

And in this 1967 television production, it was performed by the American held in tenor Jean Cox and Helen Donat, a true counter melody favorite.

Everybody knows, I think, how much I adore Helen Donat.

She became famous for being one of the most prominent and earliest known composers of Western sacred plainechant.

Fritz Wunderlich passed away in 1966 at the age of 35 from a skull fracture after an accidental fall down a staircase.

Oh.

He was a legendary German lyric tenor who was celebrated internationally for his interpretation of the Mozart repertoire.