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Dietrich Erbelding was born in Bludenz, Austria in 1929. He started his musical training at the piano at age four and first concertized with the Heidelberg Symphony at age seven. After the war, he toured Europe and the Middle East as a concert pianist and accompanist for five years. He earned a Doctorate at Heidelberg University in Philosophy while conducting in Regensburg. Dietrich Erbelding became coach and conductor at the Heidelberg, Hof and Regensburg opera houses and he was the acting Music Director at the Mannheim National Theater. At the Bayreuth Festivals, he worked as assistant chorus director and musical assistant to conductors Hans Knappertsbusch and Wolfgang Sawallisch; he participated as musical assistant under Herbert v. Karajan at the Salzburg Festivals and conducted and accompanied at the Edinbourgh Festivals in Scotland. During his twenty year career as conductor in Germany, he has conducted a wide repertoire of opera, operetta and symphonic repertoire, most of which in multiple performances. For example, he conducted Mozart’s Così fan tutte over four hundred times. He also conducted the premiere of Hindemith’s The Long Christmas Dinner in 1962 in Paris. He appeared a guest conductor all over Europe, in Caracas and Maracaibo, Venezuela, as well as in the United States. Mr. Erbelding later turned his attention to teaching. He taught opera and lieder classes at the Mannheim Musikhochschule; he founded and taught at the Academia della Musica in San Cristobal, Venezuela at which time he translated Bizet’s Carmen into Spanish; he taught at the Musashino University in Tokyo, Japan and in Iceland. Mr. Erbelding came to California in 1968 as chorus director of the San Francisco Opera. In California, he has taught at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the University of California, Santa Cruz, Crestmont Conservatory and teaches voice in private studios in Fairfield and Hayward. In 1980 he founded Pocket Coach Publications which produces comprehensive coaching tapes, translations and music books for singers and choruses. He is currently the Music Director of the Pacific Singing Society and four other German community choruses in the San Francisco Bay area. With Michael Fissolo, Dietrich Erbelding has created the Virtual Orchestra which is a computerized interactive orchestral system used in productions of Strauss’ Die Fledermaus, Wagner’s Die Walküre with R.W. Productions in Fairfield, California and Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel and Wagner’s Die Walküre with Golden Gate Opera in San Francisco. Pocket Coach Publications and R. W. Productions together feature the Virtual Orchestra in the Gold Label Performance Series aria orchestral accompaniments line of CDs and tapes; click on About the Virtual Orchestra to find out more about this unique, interactive state-of-the-art orchestral system. |
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