Uccelli [née Pazzini], Carolina Uccellini, Marco

Unger [Ungher], Caroline [Karoline, Carolina, Carlotta]

(b Stuhlweissenburg [now Székesfehérvár], 28 Oct 1803; d Florence, 23 March 1877). Austrian mezzo-soprano. The daughter of Johann Karl Unger, a professor at the Theresian Academy, she had her first singing lessons with Joseph Mozatti and Ugo Bassi. Later she studied with Aloysia Weber, J.M. Vogl and finally with Domenico Roncini in Milan. She made her début on 24 February 1824 in Vienna at the Kärntnertortheater as Dorabella in Così fan tutte. She and Henriette Sontag sang in the première of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on 7 May 1824.

The next year Unger followed the impresario Domenico Barbaia to Italy; as early as 1825, the cartellone of Naples listed her as one of the prime donne among the women singers engaged for the season. She enjoyed further success in Turin, Bologna, Genoa, Milan and Rome. At La Scala she sang Isoletta in the première of Bellini's La straniera on 14 January 1829. In May 1830 she shone in Rossini's Il turco in Italia and Pacini's La sposa fedele. Early in 1833 she was engaged by the Teatro della Pergola in Florence, and from October 1833 she sang in the Théâtre Italien in Paris, where she was acclaimed in Bellini's I Capuleti ed i Montecchi. After nine years of absence she returned to Naples in May 1834, and in autumn 1835 was the first German-speaking singer there in the role of Norma. On 4 February 1836 she sang in the première of Donizetti's Belisario at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, where two years later she created the title role of Donizetti's Maria di Rudenz. By 1837 she had a repertory of more than 100 roles. She made guest appearances in 1839 as Anna Bolena and Norma in Dresden, where the contemporary music press wrote of ‘her excellent method of singing, and the truth and ardour of her dramatic expression’. In 1841 she married the French writer and translator of Goethe's Faust François Sabatier, and ended her stage career in Italy, laden with honours. She continued to sing on the concert platform, and besides her performances in opera, became an outstanding interpreter of lieder by Mozart and Schubert. After her retirement from the operatic stage, Unger began to reveal a considerable talent as a composer of lieder. A British private collector owns two autograph volumes (one of them subsequently printed for private circulation; copy in A-Wgm) that bear witness to her ability in a repertory extending from brief settings of Goethe, Heine and other Romantic poets, to lengthy ballad-like settings of French poems by her husband.

One of the few 19th-century Austrian singers to enjoy her greatest triumphs in Italy, Unger was an outstanding exponent of bel canto. Donizetti and Bellini wrote parts for her, and Rossini, who spoke of her possessing ‘the ardour of the south, the energy of the north, brazen lungs, a silver voice and a golden talent’, engaged her to sing in his operas. According to Fétis she was large and attractive, and had a fine, broad tone except in her upper register, in which there was some harshness and forcing. Her greatest strength, however, was her power of expression, which allowed her to triumph over such rivals as Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ES (R. Celletti)

FétisB

GSL

‘Karoline Unger’, Dresdener Abendzeitung (1 March 1826)

‘Karoline Unger in Padua’, Allgemeine Theaterzeitung, xxv/174–6 (1832)

F. Liszt: ‘Karoline Unger’, Allgemeine Theaterzeitung, xxxii/76 (1839)

P. Sabatier: La cantatrice Carlotta Ungher (Geneva, 1963)

P. Branscombe: ‘Schubert and the Ungers: a Preliminary Study’, Schubert Studies, ed. B. Newbould (Aldershot, 1998), 209–19

P. Branscombe: ‘Schubert und Nestroy (mit einem Seitenblick auf die Familie Unger)’, Schubert und seine Freunde, ed. E. Badura-Skoda and others (Vienna, 1999), 279–90

URSULA KRAMER (with PETER BRANSCOMBE)

Unger, Georg

(b Leipzig, 6 March 1837; d Leipzig, 2 Feb 1887). German tenor. Having abandoned theological studies, he made a successful début as an opera singer at Leipzig in 1867, which led to further engagements in several German cities. At Mannheim in June 1874, on the recommendation of Ernst Frank, Unger sang to Hans Richter, who was touring Germany auditioning singers for the première of Wagner's Ring in 1876. Unger sang from Tannhäuser and went to Bayreuth in July 1874 to learn the part of Loge with Richter. Eventually, however, he was given the roles of Froh and Siegfried, although performing both roles proved too demanding and caused Unger to miss performances, and he was replaced as Froh in the second cycle to save his voice for the more taxing role of Siegfried. After his appearance in London at the Wagner Festival of 1877, the composer no longer used him. He returned to Leipzig, where he sang until 1881.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

E. Newman: The Life of Richard Wagner, iv (London, 1947/R), 410–11

H. Pleasants: The Great Singers (New York, 1966), 233

W. Herrmann: ‘Von Unger bis Cox: die Galerie der Mannheimer Heldentenöre’, Ein Leben für die Oper (Laaber, 1982), 83–9

J.A. FULLER MAITLAND/CHRISTOPHER FIFIELD

Unger, Gerhard

(b Bad Salzungen, Thuringia, 26 Nov 1916). German tenor. He studied in Eisenach and at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik, and in 1947 was engaged at Weimar, where he sang lyric roles such as Tamino, Alfredo and Pinkerton, and David, his most popular role at that period of his career, at Bayreuth (1951–2). In 1952 he moved to the Berlin Staatsoper and in 1961 to Stuttgart, where he remained until 1982. A member of the Hamburg Staatsoper (1962–73), he appeared at the Vienna Staatsoper, La Scala, the Paris Opéra, the Metropolitan and in Salzburg, where in 1961 he sang Pedrillo (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), another favourite role, which he repeated over 300 times. In the 1970s and 80s he specialized in character roles, such as the Captain (Wozzeck), Skuratov (From the House of the Dead), Brighella (Ariadne auf Naxos), the Italian Singer (Der Rosenkavalier) and, above all, Mime in both Das Rheingold and Siegfried, which he sang widely in Europe and North and South America. Unger was also admired as a singer of Bach. His highly placed, bright, clear-toned voice hardly changed as he grew older, so that in 1980 he could still carry conviction as Pedrillo at Bregenz. He recorded many of his roles, including Pedrillo, Monostatos, Brighella, David and Alwa (Lulu).

WOLFRAM SCHWINGER/ELIZABETH FORBES