better suited to his voice. Also, he was afflicted in later years with a chronic back injury. Similarly, he sang in Parsifal first as the baritone Amfortas when he was younger and switched to the bass Gurnemanz later, and to the even lower bass Titurel after that. He was also celebrated for his Pizarro in Beethoven's Fidelio, of which a live 1960s recording from Covent Garden was issued for the first time in 2005 under the Testament label. Hotter had a close working relationship with Richard Strauss. He performed in the premieres of the Strauss late operas: as the commandant in the 1938 opera Friedenstag, as Olivier in Capriccio in 1942 and the Jupiter in private dress rehearsal in 1944 of Die Liebe der Danae. After the end of the war, he also sang Sir Morosus in Die Schweigsame Frau with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Karl Böhm. Strauss dedicated his song "Erschaffen und beleben" to Hotter, who also recorded many of the songs of Strauss. Hotter's daughter Gabriele married Strauss' grandson Richard in 1962. Although his international fame was almost entirely in the German repertoire, in Germany and Austria he was also known for performing Verdi in the vernacular and was, for example, a popular Falstaff and a formidable Grand Inquisitor in Don Carlos, a role he also performed in Italian in several theatres, including the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He performed, and recorded, several non-German opera roles in German translation, including Count Almaviva (Mozart), Boris Godunov (Mussorgsky) and Don Basilio (Rossini). Hotter was also known as a lieder singer. He left several recordings of Schubert lieder, including Winterreise, Schwanengesang, and other songs. He also sang sacred music and left recordings of Bach cantatas and one recording of Haydn's Die Schöpfung in which he sang both the low bass role of Archangel Raphael and the soft, high baritone role of Adam. A passionate anti-Nazi, Hotter used to make fun of Hitler at parties and refused to take part in the Bayreuth Festival during the Third Reich because of the Festival's association with Hitler and his politics. According to Hotter's obituary in The Times, Hitler kept Hotter's records in his private collection. When Hotter was interrogated about this at a postwar denazification hearing, he answered that the Pope had some of them too. Hotter never completely retired from the stage, making his final public appearance in his nineties after