Let's eavesdrop -- for now just a bit --
on Hagen, left alone with his thoughts
"Hier sitz' ich zur Wacht": William Wildermann as Hagen
"sits watch" over the Hall of the Gibichungs in Seattle, 1975.
[1]You sons of freedom,joyful companions,merrily sail on your way!Though you may scorn me,you'll serve me soon,the Nibelung's son.-- singing translation by Andrew Porter,used in our English-language recording
[Suggestion: Dial back the volume on [1]; my source is loud (and noisy).]
[2]
[3]
[4 (in English)]
Patience, Hagen fans! Credits for the performances will appear in due time.
by Ken
Not a "whistle a happy tune" kind of guy is our Hagen.
One of the above performances is very much not like the others, and I'm not thinking about the difference in language between our first performance and the others. I've intentionally omitted identification of the performances so we can focus on the performances themselves, but be assured that eventually they'll be fully identified, when we'll also clarify another, even more obvious trick embedded in the layout of the performances. For now, I'm just curious whether the difference I have in mind will be as obvious to other listeners.
Now, this isn't literally our meeting with Hagen, as might have been assumed from the post title. That occurred roughly 40 minutes earlier in Götterdämmerung, at the start of Act I -- and we need to remember that Act I isn't the start of Götterdämmerung, inseparably attached as it is to the roughly 40-minute Prologue, counting the extraordinary orchestral bridge known as "Siegfried's Rhine Journey," which takes us from the ecstasies of Brünnhilde's sendoff to her beloved Siegfried, as he sets out on his journey on the Rhine, to the more workaday world of the Gibichungs, specifically the king and queen of the Gibichungs, the brother and sister Gunther and Gutrune, and their half-brother (same mother, different fathers) Hagen.
(According to present plan -- and for those of you who are new to these parts, "plans" hereabouts have a way of, er, mutating -- we are eventually going to hear our initial encounter with Hagen.)
Let's hop on the boat with Siegfried for his "Rhine Journey"!
Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded Oct.-Nov. 1961
Now here's the "Rhine Journey" preceded for concert performance
by the gorgeous "Dawn" that bridges the Prologue's two scenes --
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, cond. EMI, recorded Dec. 13-14, 1972
Philharmonia Orchestra, Yuri Simonov, cond. Collins, recorded August 1990
Berlin Philharmonic, Klaus Tennstedt, cond. EMI, recorded c1980
Berlin Philharmonic, Lorin Maazel, cond. RCA, recorded c1998
NBC Symphony Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini, cond. Music & Arts, recorded live in Carnegie Hall (in stereo!), Apr. 4, 1954
I love all these concert performances, starting with Klemperer's bracing energy in just the essentially unaltered "Rhine Journey," picking up right after what would properly be the high-voltage high-wire high-C's climax of the Brünnhilde-Siegfried duet, sweeping through Siegfried's horn call -- kudos to all our horn principals, in London, Berlin, and New York -- and the river journey to the stopoff we witness at the audibly earthbound home of the Gibichungs. As in all of Boult's beautiful series of Wagner-excerpt recordings, his hand is steady and his ear sure, and Simonov's modest added note of gravity is welcome too.
If there's any sense that we're missing just a bit the massed solidity of a more "Germanic" orchestral sound, it's handy to have the two Berlin Phil performances, and I really love the deep integrity of Tennstedt's -- hardly slow yet never rushed, giving full value to each of the changing aural landscapes. Maazel, a practiced hand at dramatic pacing, is building the mounting climax of "Dawn" so skillfully that it's an even more-than-usual jolt when, instead of arriving at the climactic full-orchestra statement of the "Hero" motif, we get the standard jump cut to the after-climax of the love duet. (Though I've never heard Maazel's 1968 or 1969 Bayreuth Ring cycles, which I see are in circulation, I may have to satisfy my curiosity, notwithstanding the not-wildly-promising casts. It seems a shame, considering the number of conductors who got to record Ring cycles without bringing much that's special to them, that Maazel never got a crack.) Finally we have a happy, modestly stereophonic reminder of Toscanini's Wagnerian credentials, in a songful and forceful sweetheart of a performance.
Note that Toscanini and Maazel tack on concert endings, as I expect the composer would have expected. (Toscanini, remember, is conducting an actual concert here.) Still, I'm pleased that the others have bravely left us starkly in the seemingly anticlimactic workaday soundworld of Gibichheim.
SOMETIMES I THINK WHAT THE RING IS ABOUT, OR AT
LEAST HEADED TOWARD, IS THE MEETUP WITH HAGEN
Look at The Ring from a certain slant, and everything does seem to be pointing toward our great meetup with this endlessly absorbing character. Which I don't think is accidental or incidental, if we remember that what got Wagner started on this entire mad project was a yen to tell a story that was to be called Siegfried's Death. The fact is, you can't have Siegfrieds Tod without Hagen.
So while the chunk of Act I of Götterdämmerung we're focused on this week isn't from our first encounter with Hagen, in some ways it's more important, giving us a startling glimpse, as arranged by Wagner the crafty dramatist, of Hagen alone -- alone with his thoughts, alone and free to be himself, not the carefully crafted person he presents himself as to the world, emphatically including his half-siblings Gunther and Gutrune, not to mention their recently arrived guest, Siegfried.
BEFORE REHEARING OUR HAGEN EXCERPTS, IN PROPER
CONTEXT, RECALL THAT WE GOT HERE BY AN ODD ROUTE
Last week, some of you will recall (in "A closer look at, or anyway listen to, 'persondom' at play in Act I of Die Walküre"), we were immersed in Act I of Die Walküre, focusing on how the caliber of the singing affects the sense of "persondom" the performer of Hunding is able to create. We're by no means finished with that, but for various reasons I've chosen to make this jump to Götterdämmerung, the final opera of the Ring cycle, and while I did mention that I did intend to extend this discussion to the character of Hagen, I never did find a convenient way to describe the connection between the roles, because really there isn't any, other than the obvious one, that they were both written taking generous musico-dramatic advantage of the vocal resources of a flexible, full-toned bass.
At the same time, they're both commonly thought of as "villains," so it may be thought that vocal polish can be easily sacrificed to "character." They're evil, or if not evil, then at least mean. As if this by itself tells us much of anything. I don't buy this line of thinking with regard to Hagen any more than I did with regard to Hunding, and I just want to remind you of the admittedly oversimple categorization I imposed last week on our Hundings, sorting the basses into two groups:
• Group I: singers who provide listening pleasure with the sheer sound of their voices
• Group II: singers who don't so much
I tried to suggest that even in the matter of dramatic characterization, the Group I guys start with the large advantage of vocal tools that can help them create what I'm calling this sense of "persondom," for us to recognize and identify with or maybe against. Now, as we return to the four snippets from Hagen's Watch we heard at the top of this post, this is a distinction I invite you to keep in mind.
Götterdämmerung: Act I, Gunther, "Du, Hagen! Bewache die Halle!" . . . Hagen's Watch
The Hall of the Gibichungs on the Rhine. This is quite open at the back. The background presents an open shore as far as the river; rocky heights border the shore. At one side are thrones for GUNTHER and GUTRUNE, with a table in front of them, with provision for seating.
As our excerpt begins, SIEGFRIED and GUNTHER, having taken an oath of blood brotherhood (from which HAGEN abstained, saying that his impure blood would spoil their drink), are ready to leave for their journey to BRÜNNHILDE's mountaintop. SIEGFRIED has already headed for the riverbank to prepare his boat.
GUNTHER: You, Hagen, keep watch o'er the palace.
[He follows SIEGFRIED to the shore. SIEGFRIED and GUNTHER, after they have laid their arms in the boat, put up the sail and make all ready for departure; HAGEN takes up his spear and shield. GUTRUNE appears at the door of her room just as SIEGFRIED pushes off the boat, which floats at once into midstream.]
GUTRUNE: So fast! Where have they gone to?
HAGEN [while he slowly seats himself in front of the hall, with shield and spear]:
They've sailed -- Brünnhilde they'll find.
GUTRUNE: Siegfried?
HAGEN: See, see his haste!
He's eager to win you!
GUTRUNE: Siegfried -- mine!
[She returns to her room in excitement. SIEGFRIED has seized an oar and with its strokes he drives the boat down the stream so that it is quickly lost to view.]
HAGEN [sits motionless, leaning his back against the doorpost of the hall]:
I sit here and wait, watching the house.
guarding the hall from the foe.
Gibich's son is borne by the wind,
away to his wooing he's gone.
His ship is steered by his fearless friend,
who'll brave the the fire in his place:
and he will bring his bride to the Rhine;
with her, he brings me the Ring!
You sons of freedom, joyful companions,
marrily sail on your way!
Though you may scorn me, you'll serve me soon,
the Nibelung's son.
[A curtain, attached to the front of the hall, closes and cuts off the stage from the audience.]
-- singing translation by Andrew Porter,used in our English-language recording
[1] [Hagen's Watch: 1:53-6:19; "Ihr freien Söhne" at 5:10] Gottlob Frick (bs), Hagen; with Hermann Uhde (bs-b), Gunther; Amy Shuard (s), Gutrune; Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Franz Konwitschny, cond. Live performance, Oct. 2, 1959
[2] [Hagen's Watch: 1:51-6:03; "Ihr freien Söhne" at 5:10] Gottlob Frick (bs), Hagen; with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (b), Gunther; Claire Watson (s), Gutrune; Vienna Philharmonic, Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded May-Nov. 1964
[3] [Hagen's Watch: 1:51-5:59; "Ihr freien Söhne" at 5:01] Karl Ridderbusch (bs), Hagen; with Thomas Stewart (b), Gunther; Gundula Janowitz (s), Gutrune; Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded Oct. 1969-Jan. 1970
[4 (in English)] [Hagen's Watch: 2:08-6:42; "You sons of freedom" at 5:40] Aage Haugland (bs), Hagen; with Norman Welsby (b), Gunther; Margaret Curphey (s), Gutrune; English National Opera Orchestra, Reginald Goodall, cond. EMI-Chandos, recorded live, December 1977
GOTTLOB FRICK EXPLANATORY NOTE: You may or may not have noticed during our blind first hearing that performances [1] and [2] feature the same bass. As I've mentioned before, my introduction to and immersion in Götterdämmerung began with the release of the landmark Solti-Decca recording, the first proper recording of the opera and very likely still all around the best. Not the least of its attractions was the Hagen of the veteran Gottlob Frick, and there was never any question in my mind that when we came to talk about Hagen, that performance would have to be represented.
The fact remains, though, that Frick was 58 in 1964. For the record, he would go on the following year to record another first-rate Hunding in the Solti-Decca Walküre, the completion of their Ring, and even more remarkably he would sing an altogether wonderful Gurnemanz in the 1971-72 Solti-Decca Parsifal. Still, much as I love his 1964 Hagen, I thought it would be nice to hear an earlier version. This was no trouble with Hunding, where we can easily hear him back to 1953, but confined to my CD holdings the farthest I could push back time for his Hagen is 1959, to the merely-53-year-old Gottlob Frick.
SO LET'S COMPARE OUR HAGEN SCORECARDS
It seems pretty obvious to me that we've got two basses from Group I, [1] and [2] Frick and [3] Karl Ridderbusch, and one from Group II, [4] Aage Haugland. I don't think I ever heard Haugland live, so all I have to go on is the recordings, which seem to me pretty dismal. There's an occasional sung tone here or there; the rest is that godawful noise. (I kind of got the logic of casting him as the flamboyant ex-monk Varlaam in EMI's generally disappointingly cast -- and generally disappointing -- 1976 made-in-Poland recording of Mussorgsky's own version of Boris Godunov. Varlaam can be thought of as someone who basically makes sort of wild noises, and the great "In the town of Kazan" song will sort of work this way. It's not a way I have much use for, though, given my unreconstructed belief that opera is an art form one of whose basic components is, you know, singing.) The shame is that in the other ENO Ring recordings the fine Australian bass Clifford Grant sang not only Hunding but Fafner in both The Rhinegold and Siegfried, and sang them splendidly.
As for Ridderbusch, well, my goodness! Did you hear that? I've explained that in my formative years with Götterdämmerung not just the Solti-Decca recording but the Karajan-DG that followed five or six years later was crucial. Having already fallen hard for Frick's chilling, incredibly resonant Hagen, I went positively crazy for Ridderbusch's, and listened compulsively to both. Ridderbusch's Hagen is a performance that continues to thrill and delight me. I'm looking forward to sharing more of it.
I DON'T DISMISS GROUP II HAGENS OUT OF HAND, BUT --
or, What about that Josef Greindl fellow we've been hearing?
Fair enough. Since Greindl's Wagner singing was the jumping-off point for this line of investigation, he obviously had to be represented here -- Hagen was one of his major roles, and he sang it all over, with everybody, and probably to satisfactory effect in the theater. Again, I don't want to suggest that he was other than, um, a contributing artist. The case for Kurt Böhme is harder to make, especially if we're only hearing him on recordings; probably in the theater the blunt force of the instrument counted for more than it does this way.
Let's listen. It's the same excerpt, incorporating Hagen's Watch.
[Hagen's Watch: 1:46-5:34; "Ihr freien Söhne" at 4:30] Josef Greindl (bs), Hagen; Hermann Uhde (bs-b), Gunther; Natalie Hinsch-Gröndahl (s), Gutrune; Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Clemens Krauss, cond. Live performance, Aug. 12, 1953
[Hagen's Watch: 1:46-5:41; "Ihr freien Söhne" at 4:31] Josef Greindl (bs), Hagen; Thomas Stewart (b), Gunther; Ludmila Dvořáková (s), Gutrune; Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Karl Böhm, cond. Philips, recorded live, July-Aug. 1967
[Hagen's Watch: 1:42-5:33; "Ihr freien Söhne" at 4:29] Kurt Böhme (bs), Hagen; Hermann Uhde (bs-b), Gunther; Marianne Schech (s), Gutrune; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Fritz Stiedry, cond. Live performance, Mar. 2, 1957
For Greindl, we're hearing the earliest and latest of the Hagens of his I have, expecting there would be a larger difference over the course of those 14 years. I guess we can here that the voice in 1967 is less fully weighted, but it's hard to say it's significantly less attractive than it was in 1953, because it wasn't very attractive in 1953. This sure isn't the way I want to hear this music. As for Böhme, I really had trouble deciding whether to offer this performance or one from Covent Garden, with Rudolf Kempe conducting, from later in the same year; they're both hard to listen to. And in both he solves the problem of the D-sharp on which the line "mir aber bringt er den Ring!," "to me he's bringing the Ring!," climaxes by shouting it.
But seriously now, would you listen to what our Group II basses do with that culminating phrase of Hagen's, "des Niblungen Sohn"? We've got guys here who seem to have no manageable vocal solution for either the upper B-flat ("Nib-") or the lower one ("-lungen Sohn"). This just can't be what Wagner had in mind, can it?
NOTE: I STILL HAVE IT IN MIND TO ADD A FEW MORE
GROUP I-TYPE HAGENS, FOR PLEASURE AND VARIETY
[TUESDAY MORNING UPDATE: And finally I've added them!]
When I started Hagen-shopping I was surprised at the disappointment level of even a number of name-brand basses. As we're going to hear in a moment from a reliable source, the role isn't easy. Once upon a time it was a standard item in the repertory of any singer offering himself for hire in the German bass repertory; increasingly it seems to have become something of a character-bass role.
I'm most sorry to say that there's no Kurt Moll recording, for the simple reason that he never sang the role. He did in fact prepare the role, but -- as he'll be explaining for us -- but circumstances zapped the scheduled production, and he seems to have thought of it as something of a reprieve. Here's what he had to say just about this role in a 1988 interview with indefatigable interviewer Bruce Duffie, readable in its original full form on Duffie's invaluable website (link above).
BRUCE DUFFIE: Are there any Wagner roles you haven’t sung yet that you’d like to?By the way, Moll also had interesting things to say about Hunding, a role he enjoyed singing. I think we'll come back to those when we come back to Hunding. (For what it's worth, I don't recall ever encountering a Hagen performance by Franz Crass either. I don't know whether he sang the role.)
KURT MOLL: I’ve sung all the Wagner roles except Hagen and I’m really not interested in that one because it doesn’t seem to suit my nature particularly well. You need a kind of a raw voice, one that’s like a knife. You need to almost yell more than sing. You must cry out rather than sing in a bel canto style.
BD: Is that the way Wagner wrote it, or has it just come down to us that way today?
KM: It’s possible that we’ve come to the point today where Hagen is a role for someone who really can’t sing other parts any more.
BD: Is it a voice-killer?
KM: Yes, but there are certain special voices that can stand the punishment of this role. As a matter of fact, I was singing in a production of the Ring in Paris with Solti conducting, and we were supposed to do all four operas, but the last two were dropped because of difficulties with the stage-direction team. I was supposed to sing Hagen, and despite the fact that they were dropped, I was paid anyway, and I decided at that time that there was no way that I could ever earn that much money again by not singing a part. [Laughter all around] I also find that Hagen is so rough on the voice that it interferes with other parts of my career which I really enjoy, such as Lieder recitals.
TUESDAY MORNING (WEE HOURS) UPDATE:
We've got some more "Group I"-type performances!
And I made a separate set of clips of just the "Ihr freien Söhne" ("You sons of freedom") section of Hagen's Watch, because these performances, I thought, we might really want to be able to listen to easily.
Götterdämmerung: Act I, Hagen, "Ihr freien Söhne, frohe Gesellen"
You sons of freedom, joyful companions,
merrily sail on your way!
Though you may scorn me, you'll serve me soon,
the Nibelung's son.
Gerd Nienstedt (bs-b), Hagen; RAI Rome Symphony Orchestra, Wolfgang Sawallisch, cond. Broadcast performance, recorded 1968
Bengt Rundgren (bs), Hagen; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Rafael Kubelik, cond. Live performance, Mar. 23, 1974
Matti Salminen (bs), Hagen; Bavarian State Orchestra, Wolfgang Sawallisch, cond. EMI, recorded live at the Bavarian State Opera, November 1989
Gerd Nienstedt is no stranger to these parts -- we heard him in one post singing both the baritone role of Donner in Das Rheingold and the bass role of Hunding in Die Walküre (from Bayreuth, 1966-67), both quite memorably. Bengt Rundgren, whom we hear making Hagen's Watch sound almost easy, not to mention fairly gorgeous, did some lovely singing in his brief Met career (1974-75), as Fasolt in Das Rheingold as well as Hunding and Hagen -- singing the same roles in Lyric Opera of Chicago's spring 1975 Ring.
Matti Salminen of course was a leading bass, heard widely in all the Wagner bass roles, for several decades. It might be interesting to hear samples of his three commercial recordings of Hagen side by side by side, as they're noticeably different, presenting somewhat different balances of the curiosities of his vocal production, which nevertheless could make a powerful impact to go with his strong physical presence.
Now here they are in the full version of our excerpt. (Scroll up for English texts.)
Götterdämmerung: Act I, Gunther, "Du, Hagen! Bewache die Halle!" . . . Hagen's Watch
[Hagen's Watch: 1:45-4:52; "Ihr freien Söhne" at 4:08] Gerd Nienstedt (bs-b), Hagen; Thomas Tipton (b), Gunther; Leonore Kirschstein (s), Gutrune; RAI Rome Symphony Orchestra, Wolfgang Sawallisch, cond. Broadcast performance, recorded 1968
[Hagen's Watch: 1:44-5:07; "Ihr freien Söhne" at 4:14] Bengt Rundgren (bs), Hagen; William Dooley (b), Gunther; Nell Rankin (s), Gutrune; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Rafael Kubelik, cond. Live performance, Mar. 23, 1974
[Hagen's Watch: 1:50-5:18; "Ihr freien Söhne" at 4:28] Matti Salminen (bs), Hagen; Hans Günter Nöcker (b), Gunther; Lisbeth Balslev (s), Gutrune; Bavarian State Orchestra, Wolfgang Sawallisch, cond. EMI, recorded live at the Bavarian State Opera, November 1989
ALAS, THERE'S SO MUCH WE STILL DIDN'T GET TO,
EVEN WITH THIS POST'S STRETCHED TIMETABLE
For starters, I intended to look into, or rather listen to, what know about Hagen before we actually encounter him in Götterdämmerung. Then, I thought we would get to more of his music than the small chunk we carved outAnd of course the idea was that we were going to do our quick encounter with Hagen as an addendum to finishing up our look at Hunding. I guess now this all remains fair game for upcoming posts.
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