René Kollo occupied pole position among Wagner tenors from the mid-1970s on. And this is how the public perceived him, too: he was the resident heroic tenor, and his operetta appearances were regarded as 'excursions'. But the singer himself attached great importance to his operetta work, just as his artist's personality overall is a good deal richer in facets and also in contradictions than is generally assumed..

This much is evident from his career: he was a heroic tenor with a past, after all. He actually started out as a pop singer, then, after training with Elsa Varena, he began working as a lyrical tenor. He had his first engagement at the Braunschweig State Theatre in 1965, having previously taken part in the preliminaries for the Eurovision Contest that year.

His career then took him to Düsseldorf first of all, where one of the roles he sang was Mozart's Titus. He then went on to devote himself in the next few years to the more demanding heroic tenor parts that formed the basis for his international reputation. It may well be that the secret of his success lay in his past - as sung by Kollo, Siegfried, Walther von Stolzing in Die Meistersinger or Bacchus in Richard Strauss's Ariadne all sounded unusually bright and impulsive, and as young as one imagines these characters.

But Kollo's repertoire also included more difficult, inwardly torn characters - his personification of Laca in Janacek's opera Jenufa, which he sang in Harry Kupfer's 1981 production in Cologne, remains unforgotten to this day. And he also appeared in Patrice Chéreau's legendary 1976 Ring in Bayreuth, which presented Siegfried as a shady and broken figure. Performances like these showed what dramatic intensity René Kollo was capable of, and how strongly he was prepared to identify with his roles – even though (an example of the contradictions in his artistic persona) he regularly criticised so-called 'producer's theatre'.

Another facet of Kollo's art was his interest in 'light music', which he sang not as a concession to audience taste, but because he believed in it and took it seriously of his own accord. In this field, he sang the classical operetta repertoire from Suppé to Künneke, and songs by German popular singer Udo Jürgens, which he recorded in 1986. And last, but definitely not least, songs from the pens of both his father and grandfather, Willi and Walter Kollo.

In performing the works of his ancestors, René Kollo definitely saw himself as the heir to a family tradition. This much is evident from the fact that he has carried on the series of songs by Walter und Willi Kollo, which are still popular today, with contributions of his own ("Willst Du das Land meiner Träume seh'n?", "Du, hör mir zu").

Two pieces in this recital are taken from Walter Kollo's operetta Marietta (1923) - the title song "Was eine Frau im Frühling träumt" and of course the almost proverbial "Warte, warte nur ein Weilchen", which soon took on a new life on the streets of Berlin with a text referring to the mass murderer Haarmann ("He'll make mincemeat of you with his little cleaver…"). In this version it can be heard, for example, in Fritz Lang's film classic M of 1930. Willi Kollo wrote the texts to these songs, but he also achieved substantial popularity as a composer - Claire Waldoff made his "Zille Milljöh song" famous, while hits of the day like "Lieber Leierkastenmann" and "Zwei in einer großen Stadt" subsequently turned into evergreens.

But it wasn't only these songs that René Kollo brought to his public's attention again: he also initiated the complete recording of a Walter Kollo operetta, "Wie einst im Mai". The title song has stayed in the repertoire to this day, as have the best-known musical numbers, including classic examples of the typical 'Berlin song' like "Das war in Schöneberg im Monat Mai", "Untern Linden, untern Linden", "Es geht doch nischt über Berlin", and "Die Männer sind alle Verbrecher".

However, it's not only the music that is of interest in this case, but the stage play as well, which covers a period of 75 years. Willi Kollo staged the piece again in 1943 in a revised version with some newly-composed numbers ("Los, wir wollen kegeln gehn", "In puncto Liebe"). It was doubtless intended to help rally morale in the middle of the war - one of the new numbers is a fast polka entitled "Überhaupt, was geh'n uns denn die Sorgen an?" (What do we care about all these worries?). It's actually hard to imagine what effect the piece, which reflected significant social change, must have had against the background of the decline and fall of the Third Reich. Notwithstanding, the new version became established in the repertoire, and it formed the basis of the 1994 recording.

Contents:
CD 1 René Kollo singt Kollo – Auf den Spuren meiner Väter
Walter Kollo
1. Was eine Frau im Frühling träumt
from the operetta Marietta, arr. Helmut Brandt
Willi Kollo
2. Lieber Leierkastenmann
arr. Werner Windler
René Kollo
3. Willst du das Land meiner Träume seh’n
arr. Helmut Brandt & Horst Jankowski
Walter Kollo
4. Warte, warte nur einWeilchen
from the operetta Marietta, arr. Martin Hoffmann
Walter Kollo
5. Heimat, du Inbegriff der Liebe
from the operetta Derfflinger
Willi Kollo
6. Ich hab’ eine kleine Philosophie
from the Revue HerrlicheWelt, arr. Helmut Brandt & Horst Jankowski
Walter Kollo
7. Zwei rote Rosen
arr. Martin Hoffmann
Willi Kollo
8. Warum hast du so traurige Augen
arr. Helmut Brandt
Walter Kollo
9. Ein Märchenglück, ein Sommertraum
from the operetta Drei alte Schachteln, arr. Martin Hoffmann
René Kollo
10. Du, hör mir zu
arr. Helmut Brandt & Horst Jankowski
Willi Kollo
11. Das war sein Milljöh
arr. Helmut Brandt
Walter Kollo
12. Kleine Mädchen müssen schlafen geh’n
from the operetta Der Juxbaron, arr. Wolfgang Förster
Willi Kollo
13. Zwei in einer großen Stadt
aus dem Film Zwei in einer großen Stadt, arr. Helmut Brandt
Willi Kollo
14. In deine Hände
arr. Helmut Brandt & Horst Jankowski
Walter Kollo
15. Großmama
from the operetta Wie einst im Mai, arr. Helmut Brandt
Walter Kollo
16. Kind, ich schlafe so schlecht
from the operetta Filmzauber, arr. Wolfgang Förster

Total time: 55.51

René Kollo (tenor)
Jankowski Singers, Streichergruppe Hans Georg Arlt
RIAS-Tanzorchester / Horst Jankowski
Recorded: 1991/1992, RIAS-Studios, Berlin

CD 2 Walter & Willi Kollo - Wie einst im Mai
Cast:
- Fritz Juuterbog: René Kollo
- Ottilie von Henkeshofen: Marianne Larsen
- Cicero von Henkeshofen: Michael Lerchenberg
- Mechthilde von Kiefernspeck: Gisela Ehrensperger
- Stanislaus von Methusalem: Gunter Sonneson
- Angostura: April Hailer
- Juliette: Christina-Agnes Weiske
- Oberst von Henkeshofen: Hans Schulze-Bargin
Mitglieder des Chores des Metropol-Theaters Berlin
Rundfunkorchester des SWR Kaiserslautern / Peter Falk
Recorded: 1993, Studio, Südwestfunk Kaiserslautern