- Born
- Died
- Birth nameRenate Franke
- Renate Holm is an opera singer and actress. She was born on 10 August 1939 in Berlin, Germany. She had an early interest in singing and during her youth was a member of the local school and church choirs. At an early age she decided that she wanted to become an opera singer. She worked hard to pay for singing lessons to make her dream come true. In the 1950s she appeared in several German films and also made musical recordings for the radio. In 1957 she moved to Vienna, Austria, where she became a member of the Wiener Volksoper and performed as a singer on stage. Four years later, in 1961, she moved on to the Vienna State Opera, one of the world's foremost opera houses, where she regularly performed under the great Herbert von Karajan. Beside her opera performances, she also appeared in many concerts, at numerous festivals and on TV. She lives in Austria.- IMDb Mini Biography By: tim
- SpouseHorst-Wolfgang Haase(1965 - 1972) (divorced)
- Despite her substantial reputation and impressive earning power in Berlin, at the start Holm earned barely 300 Marks a month at the Viennese Volksoper. She had, she later told an interviewer, moved to Vienna only for artistic reasons ("Das habe ich wirklich nur wegen der Kunst so gemacht").
- Although it is the professional relationship with Karajan that is more widely celebrated, she was also able to advise him over a personal problem which arose when the maestro acquired a donkey which his wife found impossible to control.
- She was a member of the ensemble of the Vienna State Opera for twenty-seven years, from 1964 till 1991. It was under the direction of "the doctor", Karl Böhm that she made her first State Opera, appearances but it was Herbert von Karajan who offered her the permanent contract, and under his direction that she enjoyed a stream of successes.
- Since 2009 she has chaired the kuratotium of the Berlin based "Europäische Kulturwerkstatt".
- She lived for most of the year in Vienna, and has for many years hosted cultural events at the 350 year old water mill at Altenmarkt im Thale (north of Vienna), which she acquired back in 1966.
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