Jacques Decker

Jacques Decker (6 April 1877, Cologne — 1964, Cologne), also "Jakob Decker," was a German operatic tenor. He studied at Musikhochschule Köln under Rudolf Schulz-Dornburg and began his stage career in 1906 at the Elberfeld State Theater. Between 1908 and 1914, Decker performed at court theaters and opera houses in Hamburg, Mannheim, Düsseldorf, Brunswick, Karlsruhe, Bremen, Wiesbaden, and Basel. In 1918, Jacques Decker resumed his career after participating in World War I, performing at Bielefeld and various Rhineland theaters and touring abroad in Austria, Holland, and Belgium. He made several recordings on Vox (3) and Anker Record labels, including the complete first act of Wagner's Die Walküre, recorded with Blüthner-Orchester conducted by Edmund von Strauss in 1913, where he sang "Siegmund," co-starring with Erna Denera as Sieglinde and Gustav Schwegler as Hunding. In 1957, Jacques Decker appeared as a guest of honor in the inaugural performance at the reopened Nationaltheater Mannheim. Decker's extensive repertoire included many "heroic" roles, including Florestan in Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio, numerous Wagner's characters, such as Erik in The Flying Dutchman, Walther von Stolzing in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, or Lohengrin and Siegfried in Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle, a few tenor roles in W. Kienzl's Kuhreigen, José in Bizet's Carmen, Eleazar in Halévy's La Juive, Samson in Samson et Dalila by Saint-Saëns, Radames in Giuseppe Verdi's Aida, and Canio in Pagliacci by Ruggiero Leoncavallo.