You remember those clips of Siegmund's monologue I mentioned?* Just for laughs, let's see what happens if I try to "publish" them

"A sword my father promised me": Stuart Skelton as Siegmund, so starkly alone and defenseless, literally and figuratively in the dark, in Seattle, 2012 (set by Thomas Lynch, photo by Elise Bakketun)

by Ken

Okay, this is maybe actually just possibly working, in a very limited way.*

[*To understand what I'm talking about, you would need to have read my earlier doom-engulfed outpouring. I'm not necessarily recommending it, I'm just saying.]

Much to my surprise, we've got the Walküre clips posted (I'll bet you thought I was making it up, about having them made and ready to go!), and I've successfully -- as far as I can tell -- taken the further step of adding the promised English texts, though typographically I can't help feeling that this is sort of the way Ben Franklin would have cobbled his blog together. Still, if it works, it works! (You'll notice that I've even managed to add images to the previous post and this one.) There's time ahead for contemplating the implications, if any.

So let's go ahead, in pursuit of our listening project, and listen to Siegmund's monologue from Act I of Die Walküre; then we'll rehear Florestan's Act II monologue from Fidelio sung by the same three tenors. The idea is to see whether, and in what ways, we can hear the strong vocal kinship between the roles of Florestan and Siegmund. First off, we're hearing, twice each, probably the two most notable Siegmunds since Melchior, Jon Vickers and James King, and then we'll hear no-sort-of-dramatic-tenor at all but instead that jack-of-all-tenor-trades Plácido Domingo.

The plan then, in the event that we can actually get away with this much madness, is to retrieve from last week's post ("The Minister is coming! The Minister is coming! Don Fernando and the lesson of Fidelio, Part 2) the Vickers, King, and Domingo performances of Florestan's monologue.

NOTE ON THE EDITING OF THE AUDIO CLIPS: This bothered me while I was doing it, and it bothers me now. Normally with multiple clips of a selection, I try to make them start and stop at pretty much the same points. In this case, though, with all six sources containing Siegmund's monologue by itself on a single CD track, in the interest of sanity I just went with the CD track placements; doing otherwise would have involved having, for all six versions, the preceding and following tracks at hand in case it proved necessary to edit in bits from them. I sorta wish I'd done it that way. (On second thought, maybe not. As it turns out, the clips start in pretty much the same place, though the King-Böhm and Domingo-Barenboim go back a bit farther. More importantly, the King-Böhm continues on significantly farther, and if I'd done the editing as per "rule" it might regrettably not have -- see below.)

WAGNER: Die Walküre: Act I, Scene 2, Siegmund's monologue
("Ein Schwert verhiess mir der Vater")

SIEGMUND, you'll recall, has taken refuge during a violent storm in a hut, in a room with a giant ash tree in the center, "whose branches grow throug the roof." He was discovered passed out by SIEGLINDE, who provided him with water, who informed him that the house belongs to her husband, HUNDING, who in due time made a dramatic entrance and in the course of conversation gleaned that his guest is the mortal enemy of his family they have been pursuing. He offered hospitality for the night warned SIEGMUND that in the morning he would have to defend himself in combat. HUNDING sent SIEGLINDE off to bed, then followed her into the adjoining room, leaving SIEGMUND alone and defenseless. -- Ken

[SIEGMUND is alone. It has become quite dark. The room is lit only by a feeble fire on the hearth. SIEGMUND sinks down on the couch near the fire and broods silently for a while, in great agitation.]
A sword my father promised me.
I would find it in deepest distress.
Unarmed I stumbled into an enemy's house;
as security for his vengeance I stay here.
I saw a woman, lovely and dignified;
enchanting fear eats up my heart.
She draws me to her in longing,
she hurts me with her sweet magic,
yet she is held captive by the man
who mocks my defenselessness.
Wälse! Wälse! Where is your sword?
The stout sword that I shall wield in adversity:
will it burst from my breast where my raging heart hides it?
[The fire collapses, and a bright glow springs up, striking the place on the ash trunk indicated by SIEGLINDE's look before her exit in the previous scene.]
What is that brightly gleaming in the flickering light?
What is the light bursting from the ash tree?
My eyes are blinded by the flashing light.
The flare laughs down gaily.
How brightly the beams scratch my heart.
Is it the gaze of that radiant woman that clings there,
left behind her when she went out of the room?
[From now on, the fire on the hearth gradually sinks.]
Night and darkness closed my eyes;
then the blaze of her look fell on me.
I knew warmth and daylight.
Like a blessing on me shone the sunlight;
my head was ringed by its wonderful radiance
till it sank behind the hills.
[A new faint gleam from the fire]
Once more as it departed
at evening the light fell on me.
Even the old ash tree's trunk shone in a golden glow;
then the blossom faded, the light went out.
Night and darkness close my eyes;
deep in the recesses of my heart
an invisible fire burns on.
[The fire has burnt out; complete darkness. The door at the side opens softly. SIEGLINDE, in a white garment, comes out and advances lightly but quickly towards the hearth.]

-- sung text translated by William Mann,
stage directions by Andrew Porter

Jon Vickers (t), Siegmund; London Symphony Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, cond. RCA-Decca, recorded September 1961

Jon Vickers (t), Siegmund; Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded Aug.-Sept. and Dec. 1966

James King (t), Siegmund; Vienna Philharmonic, Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded November 1965

James King (t), Siegmund; Leonie Rysanek (s), Sieglinde; Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Karl Böhm, cond. Philips, recorded live, July 23 and Aug. 10, 1967

Plácido Domingo (t), Siegmund; Staatskapelle Berlin, Daniel Barenboim, cond. Teldec, live performance of Act I, Nov. 28, 1993

Plácido Domingo (t), Siegmund; Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Giuseppe Sinopoli, cond. Live performance, recorded July-Aug. 2000

UPDATE: Once I managed to get a bit past the consuming horror and outrage at those miserable Google and Blogger rats, enough to summon some mental leisure to think about music, I decided to do some listening and clicked first on the King-Böhm-Bayreuth performance of Siegmund's monologue, which includes the full orchestral run-up to "Ein Schwert verhiess mir der Vater" and even continues on to Sieglinde's reentrance, all the way up to "Der Mánner Sippe." It's really well conducted, don't you think? Not ostentatiously so; Böhm wasn't that kind of conductor,nor was he a conductor of labelable musical "ideologies" or recognizable tendencies. But you listen here, and it's all just really right there. And then, doesn't James King do some kind of job here?

Oh, he's just fine in the Solti Walküre recording -- outstanding, even. But this is better, even if Solti allots him more space to fill in, and he manages it.

For that matter, Karajan gives Vickers still more space to fill, and he fills it quite thrillingly. There are points to be made contra his Siegmund. Nevertheless, it remains one of the great operatic-role realizations of my experience. There was nothing like that voice at full magnitude, and most extraordinarily it also scaled down breath-catchingly for the most intimate expression. In addition, what we might call Vickers's "role curiosity" was way above the operatic average, and while it could sometimes lead him astray, it was made to order for embattled outsiders, including the likes of Saint-Saëns's Samson (and Handel's too!) and Britten's Peter Grimes -- and Siegmund. For me Vickers's earlier Walküre with Leinsdorf also holds up mighty well, but the remake with Karajan brings it to a higher level. As it happens, Karajan's DG Ring and EMI Fidelio are among my very favorites of his recordings. (I would add maybe the first DG Beethoven symphony cycle and I think the Decca Fledermaus.)

Wait, where were we? Oh yes, the King-Böhm performance. All well and good, the more expansive performance opportunities afforded by other conductors. Sometimes we want more for the thing to go forward and truly happen. Happily, in the Bayreuth Walküre King's voice is flowing freely and impactfully, and Siegmund is right there in front of us, with us, in this ghastly dead-end situation that fate -- or rather his daddy Wälse/Wotan -- has driven him into.

And if you're thinking, haven't we heard a number of singers lately singing well and interestingly in partnership with Böhm? Starting with King himself in Fidelio, as we'll be reminded in a moment. And just from Philips's 1966-67 Bayreuth Ring (not exactly a critical fave among recordings of the cycle), we've recently heard Gerd Nienstedt making a tremendous impact in the baritone role of Donner in Rheingold and the bass role of Hunding in Walküre (yes, in the very act we're listening to now), contralto Vera Soukupová singing a really splendid Erda in Rheingold, and now not just King but Leonie Rysanek in Walküre.

With dear Leonie you never knew on any given night what you were going to get, even in her famous roles like Sieglinde. But she sure sounds good here -- tell me you wouldn't love to go right on with "Der Männer Sippe" all the way to the end of the act! So maybe forget what I said earlier about my lazy editing of these clips; if I'd done a proper job of it, I would probably have lopped off the portion of the Sieglinde-Siegmund scene, and wouldn't that have been a shame? This isn't to suggest that Böhm was an operatic miracle worker, though he pulled off his share of miracles -- listen to the DG Magic Flute recording. He did have going for him, though, a deep-rooted sense of obligation to the creative effort that produced the scores he conducted, backed up by a wealth of performing experience, including his lifetime of working with singers.

Lastly but by no means insignificantly, I don't want to dismiss Domingo as an also-ran. Yes, there are places where he doesn't command the fullness of sound to fully sustain expansive passages; there are also lots of places, including the low-lying more-baritone-than-tenor ones, where he truly sounds like a Siegmund, and a really good one. In others of his late-career baritone-role reversions that I've heard -- I'm thinking of Germont père in Traviata and Simon Boccanegra -- I didn't hear much relevance in the reminders that he had begun his career as a baritone; they sounded to me more like a tenor singing baritone roles. Not so with Siegmund. And remember that Domingo was nearly 53 at the time of the Walküre Act I with Barenboim, and 59-plus at the time of the complete live (no studio retakes!) performance with Sinopoli.

FINALLY, AS WE HEARD THEM LAST WEEK, HERE
AGAIN ARE OUR THREE TENORS AS FLORESTAN

BEETHOVEN: Fidelio: Act II, Orchestral introduction
and Florestan's monologue

(1) "Gott! Welch' Dunkel hier!" ("God! What darkness here!")
A dark underground dungeon. FLORESTAN is sitting on a stone. Around his body he has a long chain, whose end is fastened to the wall.
(2) "In des Lebens Frühlingstagen" ("In the spring days of life")
(3) "Und spür' ich nicht" ("And do I not feel")

["Gott! Welch' Dunkel hier!" at 3:00] Jon Vickers (t), Florestan; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Karl Böhm, cond. Live performance, Feb. 13, 1960
["Gott! Welch' Dunkel hier!" at 3:42] Jon Vickers (t), Florestan; Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. EMI, recorded 1970

["Gott! Welch' Dunkel hier!" at 3:01] James King (t), Florestan; Staatskapelle Dresden, Karl Böhm, cond. DG, recorded c1968

["Gott! Welch' Dunkel hier!" at 3:47] James King (t), Florestan; Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Live performance, June 1970
[Again, I have to wonder whether, after such an audaciously brooding statement of the orchestral introduction, this blunt, rather shapeless rendering is really how Lenny B meant for the monologue to go.]

["Gott! Welch' Dunkel hier!" at 3:43] Plácido Domingo (t), Florestan; Staatskapelle Berlin, Daniel Barenboim, cond. Teldec, recorded May-June 1999

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