"Spurn not the nobly born," exhorts Earl Tolloller to the no-way-no-how-interested-in-high-rank Phyllis (who has much else to say and sing on the subject); here they're John Elliott and Kate Holt, in a 2009 Iolanthe production by Woodley Players Theatre (Stockport, U.K.). You won't hear much in the video clip, but naturally we've got a slew of audio clips --
GILBERT and SULLIVAN: Iolanthe: Act I, Phyllis, "Nay, tempt me not, to wealth I'll not be bound" . . . Earl Tolloller, "Spurn not the nobly born"
PHYLLIS: Nay, tempt me not;
to wealth I'll not be bound.
In lowly cot
alone is virtue found.
CHORUS OF PEERS: No, no; indeed high rank will never hurt you,
the peerage is not destitute of virtue.
EARL TOLLOLLER: Spurn not the nobly born
with love affected,
nor treat with virtuous scorn
the well-connected.
High rank involves no shame --
we boast an equal claim
with him of humble name
to be respected!
Blue blood! Blue blood!
When virtuous love is sought,
the power is naught,
though dating from the flood,
blue blood!
Spare us the bitter pain
of stern denials,
nor with low-born disdain
augment our trials.
Hearts just as pure and fair
may beat in Belgrave Square
as in the lowly air
of Seven Dials!
Blue blood! Blue blood!
Of what avail art thou
to serve us now?
Though dating from the flood,
blue blood!
CHORUS OF PEERS: Of what avail art thou
to serve us now?
Though dating from the flood,
blue blood!
Elsie Morison (s), Phyllis; Alexander Young (t), Earl Tolloller; Glyndebourne Festival Chorus, Pro Arte Orchestra, Sir Malcolm Sargent, cond. EMI, recorded Oct. 21-24, 1958
Mary Sansom (s), Phyllis; Thomas Round (t), Earl Tolloller; D'Oyly Carte Opera Chorus, New Symphony Orchestra of London, Isidore Godfrey, cond. Decca, recorded September 1960
Elizabeth Woollett (s), Phyllis; Phillip Creasy (t), Earl Tolloller; D'Oyly Carte Opera Chorus and Orchestra, John Pryce-Jones, cond. Jay Productions-Sony, recorded June 28-July 2, 1991
by Ken
No, as noted above, we have no proper post this week -- it just got too hard, and too stressful, and even though I got most of the audio clips made and had a pretty good idea (I think) of where and how the real post was/is intended to go, I just couldn't do it. (And after all, to anybody but me what does it matter?) Still, I've rallied enough to cobble together a sort of coulda-shoulda post-substitute, drawing on some of those already-made audio clips, which we'll hear in the click-through, but also with some additional clips made to order.
In the later stages of the time spent so busily not producing a post, I found myself reflecting me that the plight facing the operatic character we'll be hearing from in the click-through of this non-post, society's unyielding prejudice against persons of rank and privilege, isn't unique on the musical stage, which is how we come to be hearing from the implacable Phyllis and the imploring Earl Tolloller and chiming-in fellow lords.
JUST WHAT MIGHT A PERSON OF RANK ENDURE TO
OVERCOME SOCIETY'S SCORN FOR THE PRIVILEGED?
Meet that young Franconian nobleman Walther von Stolzing, whose mad infatuation with the Nuremberg goldsmith Veit Pogner runs up against much the same bigotry as the assembled lords encounter from Phyllis in Iolanthe. Yes, there's an important difference the mad infatuation of the besotted young Walther is totally returned by young Eva Pogner, whose papa is determined that she will be affianced the very next day, at the Midsummer (or St. John's) Day festivities, to one of his fellow Mastersingers, a guild of tradesmen united in their love of, you know, Art. The only solution is for Walther somehow to become a Mastersinger, a process that normally takes years of apprentice-like study, in a day.
And so Walther presents himself to the Masters. If you were here last week ("Still on the trail of our two classic Operatic Bad Days, we pause to sniff an elder tree"), we eavesdropped on the cobbler Hans Sachs, the wisest and most respected of the Masters, musingin his Fliedermonolog later in the day, as he inhales the scent of the elder tree in front of his house, and despite a determined effort to get some cobbling done is unable to let go of the events of Walther's appearance. (These, by the way, are clips newly made for this nonpost -- different from the performances of the complete Fliedermonolog we heard last week. And while we're going to hear the whole of the monologue again when we get to the proper post, that'll be in still-different performances!)
[UPDATE: There is now one performance we heard last week: the Schorr, which I edited down and plunked in, on the ground that, well, I had to, dontcha think?]
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: Act II, Hans Sachs, "Und doch, 's will halt nicht geh'n" (from the Fliedermonolog)
HANS SACHS: And yet, it just won't go. --
I feel it, and cannot understand it --
I cannot hold on to it, nor yet forget it;
and if I grasp it wholly, I cannot measure it! --
But then, how should I grasp
what seemed to me immeasurable?
No rule seemed to fit it,
and yet there was no fault in it. --
It sounded so old, and yet was so new,
like birdsong in sweet May: --
whosoever hears it
and, carried away by madness,
were to sing it after the bird,
it would bring him derision and disgrace! --
Spring's command,
sweet necessity
placed it in his breast;
then he sang as he had to;
and as he had to, so he could --
I noticed that particularly.
The bird that sang today
had a finely formed beak;
if he made the Masters uneasy,
he certainly well pleased Hans Sachs!
-- all Meistersinger translations by Peter Branscombe
Friedrich Schorr (bs-b); London Symphony Orchestra, Albert Coates, cond. EMI, recorded May 10, 1930
Rudolf Bockelmann (bs-b), Hans Sachs; Berlin State Opera Orchestra, Franz Alfred Schmidt, cond. Telefunken, recorded Feb. 3, 1933
José van Dam (bs-b), Hans Sachs; Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Sir Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded live, Sept. 23-27, 1995
Bernd Weikl (b), Hans Sachs; Bavarian State Orchestra, Wolfgang Sawallisch, cond. EMI, recorded April 1993
No, Bockelmann's Fliedermonolog isn't as beautiful as Friedrich Schorr's, one of the performances we heard last week [and now again this week! -- Ed.], but the voice is an authentic Heldenbariton of excellent quality, something we've mostly had to do without for a lot of decades now. I enjoy van Dam's recorded-in-concert Sachs a lot but can't pretend that this softer-grained instrument is the real thing. And Weikl's medium-weight baritone, which quite thrilled me when I first heard him, in his Met debut role, Wolfram von Eschenbach in Tannhäuser (at a time when decent Wolframs weren't much easier to find than, say, decent Sachses), is a long way from a real Heldenbariton and shows the at best partial success of the effort all over the place.
SO WHAT IS SACHS REMEMBERING HERE?
It's the poetry of Walther's singing Sachs can't get out of his head. And mostly what he's remembering is, first, the young knight's answer to the question of who his Master was, and then the song he offered as his audition piece. It just so happens that we've got clips of both all ready! (Don't worry, when we get to the real post, we've already got more extended versions of both excerpts ready to go.)
Let's start by hearing Walther answer the question "In which school did you succeed in learning singing?"
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: Act I, Walther von Stolzing, "Am stillen Herd in Winterszeit"
WALTHER VON STOLZING: At the quiet hearth in wintertime,
when castle and courtyard were snowed up --
as once spring so sweetly laughed,
and as it then soon awoke anew --
an old book, left to me by my ancestor,
often gave me this to read:
Herr Walther von der Vogelweide --
he was my master.
When the meadow was freed from frost
and summertime returned,
what previously in long winter nights
the old book had told me
now resounded loudly in the forest's splendor.
I heard it ring out brightly;
in the forest at Vogelweide
I also learnt how to sing.
What winter night,
what forest splendor,
what book and grove taught me,
what the wondrous power of the poet's song
tried in secret to disclose to me;
what my horse's step
at a trial of arms,
what a round dance at a merry gathering
gave me to attend to thoughtfully:
if I must exchange life's
highest prize for song,
in my own words and to my own melody,
it will flow into a unity for me
as a Mastersong, if I understand aright,
and pour out before you Masters.
Lauritz Melchior (t), Walther von Stolzing; London Symphony Orchestra, Lawrance Collingwood, cond. EMI, recorded May 23, 1931
Franz Völker (t), Walther von Stolzing; Berlin State Opera Orchestra. EMI, recorded 1928
Gösta Winbergh (t), Walther von Stolzing; Royal Swedish Opera Orchestra, Siegfried Köhler, cond. Sony, recorded Sept. 19-22, 1995
Melchior of course never actually sang Walther, but he did learn the role, but a singer who took in stride the unbearably-punishing-for-most-tenors roles of Tannhäuser and Tristan and Siegmund and Siegfried just found the higher lie of Walther too stressful vocally. Fortunately he recorded some glorious chunks of the role. Meanwhile, tenor Franz Völker, who had a long and honorable career plying heavyweight tenor roles, is heard here (and in the companion excerpt below) at 29, and those who know only his later recordings may be surprised to hear that at this point the voice was strong and genuinely beautiful, not to mention under pinpoint control.
Gösta Winbergh's version is from a CD the Swedish tenor recorded in 1995, when he was 51, a disc I don't think I discovered until after he died (in 2002). I still thought of him as a lyric tenor who sounded not quite settled in his "natural" repertory even as he was pushing with uneven success into heavier-weight roles, but at least as heard on the Wagner CD, in 1995 the writing for Rienzi, Lohengrin, Walther von Stolzing, and Parsifal seemed to suit his voice quite well -- I think it's a lovely disc.
Now for Walther's "trial" song --
Following hard upon Walther's self-presentation to the Masters in "Am stillen Herd," this is his attempt at a Mastersong, breaking all the rules, which he doesn't know anyway. (Again, next time we're going to hear a fuller version, which will place Walther's "Probelied" in better dramatic context.)
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: Act I, Beckmesser, "Fanget an!" . . . Walther von Stolzing, "Fanget an!"
BECKMESSER [from the Marker's box, invisible, loudly]: Begin!
WALTHER: "Begin!" --
[During this, repeated sounds of discouragement and scratchings of the chalk are heard from the Marker in his box.]
Thus spring cried to the forest
so that it re-echoed loudly:
and in more distant waves
the sound flees thence,
from farther off there comes a swelling
which powerfully draws nearer;
it swells and resounds;
the forest rings
with the host of lovely voices;
now loud and bright
and near at hand --
how the sound grows!
Like the clanging of bells
the throng of jubilation roars out!
The forest,
how soon
it answers to the call
which brought it new life,
and struck up
the sweet song of spring! --
[WALTHER, hearing the Marker's disparagements, pauses, then after a momentary pause of discomposure continues.]
In a thorn hedge,
consumed with jealousy and grief,
winter, grimly armed,
had to hide himself away;
with dry leaves rustling about him
he lies in wait and plans
how me might hard
this joyful singing.
[He rises from the stool]
But: "Begin!"
That was the call in my breast
when it was still ignorant of love.
I felt it rising deep within me
as if it were waking me from a dream;
my heart with its quivering beats
filled my whole bosom:
My blood pounds
all-powerfully,
swollen by this new feeling;
from a warm night
and with superior strength
this host of sighs
swells to a sea
in a wild tumult of bliss:
The breast --
how soon
it answers the call
which brought it new life:
Strike up
the majestic song of love!
Ben Heppner (t), Walther von Stolzing; with Siegfried Lorenz (b), Sixtus Beckmesser; Bavarian State Orchestra, Wolfgang Sawallisch, cond. EMI, recorded Apriil 1993
Plácido Domingo (t), Walther von Stolzing; with Roland Hermann (b), Sixtus Beckmesser; Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Eugen Jochum, cond. DG, recorded 1976
[from Walther's "Fanget an!"] Franz Völker (t), Walter von Stolzing; Berlin State Opera Orchestra, Manfred Gurlitt, cond. EMI, recorded 1928
Here we've got Franz Völker again, again in wonderful voice, and two more modern performances. Ben Heppner sang Walther quite honorably, and and in his two quite decent recordings of the role (in the 1993 Sawallisch-EMI and 1995 Solti-Decca Meistersingers, which by chance we just sampled among this week's Fliedermonolog renderings) reminds us of the potential rewards of hearing a weightier voice in the role.
Still, the ear-popper here for me is Plácido Domingo in his first recording of a Wagner role; who could know back then that he would go on to record not just Erik and Lohengrin and Parsifal (which, like Walther von Stolzing, are readily manageable by a less-substantial-than-Heldentenor voice) but Tannhäuser and Tristan and at least Act I of Siegmund? His Stolzing has always been for me an utter joy, in a Meistersinger that looked on paper like it might have real possibilities but apart from Domingo sounds to me like a near-total loss. I've read niggling about Plácido's German, and can only wonder whether the nigglers have working ears. Do they really not hear the vocal glory and sheer joy of what he's making of this music?
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY I WASB\N'T ABLE
TO COBBLE THIS NONPOST TOGETHER YESTERDAY --
I'm curious about that too.
#
No comments:
Post a Comment