A Film by Astrid Bscher

He makes you feel what it feels like to be alone at the top. Whoever sees and hears him suddenly knows more about the search for the right path that drives every serious person. His stage characters touch the heart. The bass Günther Groissböck embodies kings, scholars, philosophers in the great opera houses of the world; he plays priests, mythical creatures, gods. You could say he specialises in solitary figures.

At first glance, however, Günther Groissböck does not seem like someone who has personal experience with the subject of loneliness. The singer stands, works, acts on and off stage in intensive contact with people. He is married, father of a daughter, in the middle of life or, as conductor Philippe Jordan puts it: “He burns for many things in life, not only for art”. Can you play what you don’t know? How does he shape his stage characters? What are the building blocks for the play? When does the instrument, his voice, touch the audience? How much public spirit, how much individuality does an opera singer need today? And where does Günther Groissböck get the incredible energy he radiates on stage?

For two years we accompanied the artist from Waidhofen an der Ybbs (Lower Austria) with our camera, on night journeys and day trips. At rehearsals, sports and performances. We filmed him as the black-robed Kaspar, as the powerful King Philip or as a searcher in the villa of Richard Strauss. The result is a film portrait that tells of a special attitude to life; of loneliness as a source of artistic strength; of a man who can fill his voice with content from within. The film about Günther Groissböck tells of two lines from a Rückert poem, set to music by Gustav Mahler: “I live alone in my heaven, in my loving, in my song.”