several seasons singing such significant character roles as Schigolch in Alban Berg's twelve-tone opera Lulu. He was a notable narrator in Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder, a role he continued to take well into his eighties. Anecdotes At a brilliant performance of Walküre in Covent Garden in 1961 a mishap occurred during the final scene when Wotan is supposed to ever so slowly, silently depart from the stage. Right after striking Brünnhild's rock to call on Loge to surround it with a cordon of fire, Hotter was blinded by the light and lost his footing, falling off the stage with a crash. As he was covered in armour, he hit ground like a bomb on a corrugated-iron factory. That, however, is not how the opera is supposed to end. Hotter did not want to suggest to the audience that he had jumped off the mountain in remorse after stripping his favourite daughter of her status as goddess and putting her to sleep. So, as the music continued, Hotter gallantly climbed back on stage, reassuring the audience that he was still alive and well and the music continued to the last chord. At an earlier Walküre performance in 1956, also at Covent Garden, Hotter remembers a harmless but cheerful mishap. A bit late for his entrance in act III, he rushed backstage and swung an enormous cloak over his shoulders, entering the stage with his angry, impetuous "Wo ist Brünnhild?". His appearance, however, gave rise to merriment in the audience, a situation he would only understand at the end of the opera. He successfully sang for more than an hour before he realized that towering above his shoulders, invisible to him, was the coat-hanger on which the cloak had been hanging, a fluffy, pink coat-hanger. As Ernest Newman noted in his review, he was surely "the only man in the world who can actually step on stage and persuade you that he is God." References External links Bach-Cantatas.com biography Discography (Capon's Lists of Opera Recordings) Audio samples - Der fliegende Holländer (Daland: Kurt Böhme, Senta: Helene Werth, Erik: Bernd Aldenhoff, Mary: Res Fischer, Steuermann: Helmut Krebs, Holländer: Hans Hotter - Chor und Sinfonieorchester des Norddeutschen Rundfunks - Wilhelm Schüchter - Hamburg 1951) Richard Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer - 1. act Richard Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer - 2. act Richard Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer - 3. act On video (YouTube) singing Schumann: On video (YouTube)