OH WAIT! The missing "Norn Scene" audio clip is found -- and is now in place below! It's from the Met, March 1974: the beautiful (and beautifully cast) Götterdämmerung broadcast conducted by Rafael Kubelik during his sadly brief time as music director.
Brünnhilde (Deborah Voigt) has been awakened by Siegfried
(Jay Hunter Morris), at the Met, 2013. [photo by Ken Howard]
(Jay Hunter Morris), at the Met, 2013. [photo by Ken Howard]
After being kissed by SIEGFRIED, BRÜNNHILDE opens her eyes. SIEGFRIED stands up and stands before her. BRÜNNHILDE slowly rises to a sitting position. She raises her arms in solemn gestures, greeting the heaven and earth that now she sees again.
BRÜNNHILDE: Hail to you, sun! Hail to you, light!
Hail to you, radiant day!
My sleep was long; I am awakened.
Who is the hero who awoke me?
SIEGFRIED [deeply moved by her look and her voice, stands as if rooted to the spot]:
Through the fire I struggled, which blazes around the rock;
I broke you out of your tight helmet;
I am Siegfried, who awakens you.
BRÜNNHILDE [sitting straight up]: Hail to you, gods!
Hail to you, world!
Hail to you, shining earth!
My sleep is at an end.
I am awakened: it is Siegfried who awakens me!
SIEGFRIED [breaks out in ecstasy]:
I bless my mother, giving me birth!
bless the earth that gave me my strength!
Now I behold those eyes,
bright stars which laugh on my joy!
BRÜNNHILDE [overlapping, in impassioned accents]:
I bless your mother, giving you birth!
bless the earth, that gave you your strength.
Your eyes alone could behold me,
my heart to you alone wakes!
[Each remains in radiant, rapt contemplation of the other.]
Deborah Voigt (s), Brünnhilde; Plácido Domingo (t), Siegfried; Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Antonio Pappano, cond. EMI, from a Voigt-Domingo Wagner CD recorded January 2000
[kind of scrunched to fit the 78 side] Frida Leider (s), Brünnhilde; Rudolf Laubenthal (t), Siegfried; Berlin State Opera Orchestra, Leo Blech, cond. EMI, recorded Aug. 27, 1927
Kirsten Flagstad (s), Brünnhilde; Lauritz Melchior (t), Siegfried; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Artur Bodanzky, cond. Live performance, Jan. 30, 1937
Helen Traubel (s), Brünnhilde; Set Svanholm (t), Siegfried; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Fritz Stiedry, cond. Live performance, Feb. 10, 1951
Birgit Nilsson (s), Brünnhilde; Wolfgang Windgassen (t), Siegfried; Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Karl Böhm, cond. Philips, recorded live, July 1966
by Ken
For a post that flaunts Götterdämmerung in the title -- and doesn't it seem to go on for inches and inches? -- we're going to be hearing precious little of it today. There will be a little, though, coming up in just a moment, as we revisit, in somewhat expanded form, the first two of the three iterations of what we're calling "the 'Awakening' music," from the "Second Day" (Siegfried) and "Third Day" (Götterdämmerung) of Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung.
So no, there won't be any trace this week of the third iteration, which comes so, um, dramatically in the next-to-last scene of Götterdämmerung. We've still got too much ground to cover before we might logically come to it. Nevertheless, even though it wasn't part of my original plan, I'm thinking that maybe we do want to get there at some point, but for sure not this week, or likely even next.
My thinking for this week is that, considering that last week ("On the pleasures of getting lost in Götterdämmerung: revisiting the path to here, Part 1") we were poking around the actual awakening of Brünnhilde, in Scene 3 of Act III of Siegfried, why not start with the awakening itself? And as long as we're awakening her, why not revisit the great succession of Brünnhildes, from Frida Leider to Kirsten Flagstad to Helen Traubel (maybe not unequivocally part of this line of succession, but so close, I think, to rating a place in this line of succession) to Birgit Nilsson?
By the way we're not done with this scene, which is on today's itinerary. But before we come back to it, I thought we might have another reminder of the point we're aiming to get back to, which is the second of the three "Awakening" iterations, in such strikingly altered musical form. Trust Wagner to begin the vastest of his operatic creations in such seemingly understated, and yet such richly detailed, form. And so, without further ado --
WE'RE BACK AT THE START OF GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG, AND NOW (AS PROMISED) WE'RE GOING JUST A BIT DEEPER IN
Götterdämmerung: Prologue:
First Norn, "Welch' Licht leuchtet dort?"
On the Valkyrie Rock: The scene is the same as at the close of The Valkyrie It is night. Firelight shines up from the depths of the background.
The three Norns, tall female figures in long, dark, veil-like drapery. The First (the oldest) is lying in the foreground on the right, under the spreading pine tree; the Second (younger) reclines on a rock in front of the cave; the Third (the youngest) sits in the center at the back on a rock below the peak. Gloomy silence and stillness.
FIRST NORN [without moving]: What light shines down there?
SECOND NORN: Can it be day so soon?
THIRD NORN: Loge's flames leap and flicker round the rock.
It is night. And so we must sing as we spin.
SECOND NORN [to the FIRST]: Let us be spinning and singing;
but where, where 'tis the cord?
FIRST NORN [rises, unwinds a golden rope from herself, and ties one end of it to a branch of the pine tree]:
Though good or ill may come,
weaving the cord, I'll sing now.
At the World Ash tree once I wove,
when fair and green there grew from its branches
verdant and shady leaves.
Those cooling shadows sheltered a spring;
wisdom's voice I heard in its waves;
I sang my holy song.
A valiant god came to drink at the spring,
and the price he had to pay was the loss of an eye.
From the World Ash tree mighty Wotan broke a branch;
and his spear was shaped from that branch he tore from the tree.
As year succeeded year, the wound slowly weakened the tree;
dry, leafless, and barren -- death seized on the tree;
whispering waters then failed in the spring;
grief and sorrow stole through my song.
And so I weave at the World Ash tree no more;
today I use these branches to fasten the cord.
Sing, my sister, take up the thread;
what will happen now?
-- singing translation by Andrew Porter,used in the English National Opera performance
Anne Collins (c), First Norn; Gillian Knight (ms), Second Norn; Anne Evans (s), Third Norn; English National Opera Orchestra, Reginald Goodall, cond. EMI-Chandos, recorded live, August 1977
Margarete Klose (c), First Norn; Hilde Rössl-Majdan (ms), Second Norn; Sena Jurinac (s), Third Norn; RAI Rome Symphony Orchestra, Wilhelm Furtwängler, cond. EMI, live concert performance of the first act, Nov. 20, 1953
Jean Madeira (c), First Norn; Irene Dalis (ms), Second Norn; Martina Arroyo (s), Third Norn; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, cond. Live performance, Jan. 27, 1962
Batyah Godfrey Ben-David (c), First Norn; Mignon Dunn (ms), Second Norn; Nell Rankin (s), Third Norn; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Rafael Kubelik, cond. Live performance, Mar. 23, 1974
[Yes! It's the missing clip! FYI: The strong cast was headed by Rita Hunter as Brünnhilde, Helge Brilioth as Siegfried, and Bengt Rundgren as Hagen.]
Lili Chookasian (c), First Norn; Anna Reynolds (ms), Second Norn; Nell Rankin (s), Third Norn; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Sixten Ehrling, cond. Live performance, Mar. 29, 1975
Marjana Lipovšek (c), First Norn; Ingrid Karrasch (ms), Second Norn; Penelope Thorn (s), Third Norn; Bavarian State Orchestra, Wolfgang Sawallisch, cond. EMI, recorded live at the Bavarian State Opera, November 1989
Helga Dernesch (ms), First Norn; Tatiana Troyanos (ms), Second Norn; Andrea Gruber (s), Third Norn; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, James Levine, cond. DG, recorded May 1989
As I've mentioned before, I love the opening of Götterdämmerung -- the little orchetral prelude and the Norn Scene proper -- utterly madly, and when I starrted thinking about performances, I quickly came up with too many to includ. Indeed I've shelved one for which I think I made a clip because the link to it didn't seem to work. (I haven't had time to check it out. We may not have heard the last of it!)
Things to listen for, even in this extremely partial portion of the scene:
(1) the depth of beauty and also inexorable momentum of the musical flow. With particular reference to the Furtwängler-RAI performance. I make frequent mention of this fascination for me of the live Furtwangler-Rome Radio Ring, never intended for commercial release, but only for broadcast, as the orchestra can be heard coming under the conductor's spell, so that by Götterdämmerung it sounds to me like a great Wagner orchestra. Well, this is the scene I'm likely to cite in evidence. And if you want to hear what can happen when a great conductor works with singers who get what he's trying to do, well, you'll probably want to hear the whole scene.
(2) the considerable demands of the vocal writing -- especially, as I noted last week, the writing for the First and Third Norns. The Third, the youngest of the three sisters, impossibly demands a full-Brünnhilde sort of high dramatic soprano, and maybe then some, as we hear in just the tiny bit of her music inluded in our excerpt. (I've heard a number of sopranos who sang both roles and came through Brünnhilde more nearly unscathed.)
The First Norn, meanwhile, the oldest of the Norns, really asks for a contralto of full Erda weight and richness of tone. We've got some good ones here -- the one I'm least happy with being, perhaps surprisingly, James Levine's Helga Dernesch, whom you'd think of for Second Norn rather than First, which at least at the Met she never did except for the DG recording, and in which she doesn't sound terribly settled at the lower end, and neither she nor the Second Norn, Tatiana Troyanos, another wonderful singer cast on the light side for her role (her only Ring role at the Met was three performances of Waltraute several years later), sounds really settled in her role, and neither does this Norn Scene as a whole -- Levine clearly understands the scene and has good ideas in the form of labels you could slap on a performance but that don't add up to a performance for me. Nevertheless, I've included this version to see how other listeners take it in -- well, that plus I'd rashly gone ahead and made the clip.
SHOULD WE ASK HOW BRÜNNHILDE AND SIEGFRIED WOUND
UP TOGETHER ON THE FIRE-ENCIRCLED VALKYRIE ROCK?
As we've noted last week, at the start of the Norn Scene the sisters take note of the light around the rock where they're doing their spinning, which happens to be the Valkyrie rock, the very place where Wotan left Brünnhilde in deep sleep at the end of Die Walküre. This light, the Third Norn explains to the Second, isn't theh dawning of day, but Loge's flickering flames, and since we're working backwards here, I'm thinking it would be helpful to our thinking about the Brünnhilde-Siegfried relationship that's at the heart of Siegfried and Götterdämmerung to listen back to hear how they found their way here, inside that protective ring of fire, from which Brünnhilde in the second scene of the Götterdämmerung Prologue will be sending Siegfried off on his Rhine Journey in search of "new deeds" -- with his next stop, as we heard a couple of posts ago, at the Hall of the Gibichs and his fateful meetup with the dark-spirited Hagen.
Now those flames, impenetrable by anyone less heroic than Siegfried, may be produced by the demigod Loge, the god of fire, but of course none of this was his idea. Among the gods, the "idea man" is Wotan. And at this point I'm wondering whether we oughtn't to be wondering what brought Brünnhilde and Siegfried to this particular place. We can't trace back the full story, but we can get the essentials by going back yet another "day" to the "First Day" of The Ring, to the final scene of Die Walküre. Did we remember that it's Brünnhilde herself who suggested to her enraged-out-of-his-mind father the measures of protection he wound up allowing her as part of the terms of his abandonment of her?
Die Walküre: from the final scene of Act III --
We're going to hear two chunks from the scene: first, Brünnhilde's desperate entreaties, and then, Wotan enacting the agreed-upon conditions.
[1] end of the Wotan-Brünnhilde dialogue, from Brünnhilde, "Was hast du erdacht, das ich erdulde?," and start of Wotan's "Farewell":
BRÜNNHILDE: What have you decreed[2] the end of "Wotan's Farewell" (and of the opera),
that I must suffer?
WOTAN: In long, deep sleep
you shall be bound:
the man who wakes you again,
that man shall make you his wife!
BRÜNNHILDE [falls on her knees]: If fetters of sleep
come to bind me
and I must fall
to the man who finds me,
then one thing more you must grant me:
in deepest anguish I pray!
O shelter my slumbers,
protect me with terrors,
let only one
who is fearless and free,
none but a hero
find me here!
WOTAN: Too much you are asking,
too great a grace!
BRÜNNHILDE [embracing his knees]:
This one thing more
you must grant me!
Oh, kill me at once
as I grasp your hand;
destroy your dear one,
condemn her to die,
let her breast receive
one blow from your spear;
but ah! cast not this shame,
this cruel disgrace on her!
[With wild inspiration] At your command
a flame can be kindled,
a fiery guardian,
girding the rock,
to lick with its tongues,
to tear with its teeth
the craven who rashly ventures,
who dares to approach near the rock.
WOTAN [overcome and deeply moved, turns eagerly towards BRÜNNHILDE, raises her from her knees, and gazes with emotion into her eyes]: Farewell, my valiant, my glorious child!
You were the the holiest pride of my heart!
Farewell! Farewell! Farewell! . . .
from: "So kehrt der Gott sich dir ab":
WOTAN [sadly grasps BRÜNNHILDE's head in his hands]:[1] Brünnhilde, "What have you decreed that I must suffer?"
And sadly the god must depart:
one kiss takes your godhead away!
[He presses a long kiss on her eyes. She sinks back with closed eyes, unconscious, in his arms. He gently supports her to a low mossy bank, which is overshadowed by a wide-branching fir tree, and lays her upon it. He looks upon her and closes her helmet; his eye then rests upon the form of the sleeper, which he completely covers with the great steel shield of the Valkyrie. He turns slowly away, then turns round again with a sorrowful look. Then he strides with solemn decision to the middle of the stage, and directs the point of his spear towards a massive rock.]
Loge, here!
Come at my call!
As when first you were found,
a fiery glow,
as when you escaped me,
a wandering flicker;
once you were bound:
be so again!
Arise! Come, wavering Loge!
Surround the rock; ring it with flame!
[During the following he strikes the rock three times with his spear.]
Loge! Loge! Appear!
[A flash of flame leaps from the rock, and gradually increases to an ever-brightening fiery glow. Flickering flames break out. Bright, shooting flames surround WOTAN. With his spear he directs the sea of fire to encircle the rocks; it presently spreads toward the background, where it encloses the mountain in flames.]
Only the man
who braves my spear-point
can pass through the sea of flame!
[He stretches out the spear as if casting a spell. Then he gazes sorrowfully back at BRÜNNHILDE, turns slowly to depart, and looks back once more before he disappears through the fire. The curtain falls.]-- singing translations by Andrew Porter,used in the Goodall-ENO performance
[2] Wotan, "And sadly the god must depart"
[in English] Rita Hunter (s), Brunnhilde (in [1]); Norman Bailey (b), Wotan; English National Opera Orchestra, Reginald Goodall, cond. EMI-Chandos, recorded live, December 1975
[1] Brünnhilde, "Was hast du erdacht, das ich erdulde?"
[2] Wotan, "Denn so kehrt der Gott sich dir ab"
Birgit Nilsson (s), Brünnhilde (in [1]); Hans Hotter (bs-b), Wotan; Vienna Philharmonic, Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded Oct.-Nov. 1965
[1] Brünnhilde, "Was hast du erdacht, das ich erdulde?"
[2] Wotan, "Denn so kehrt der Gott sich dir ab"
Kirsten Flagstad (s), Brünnhilde (in [1]); Ferdinand Frantz (bs-b), Wotan; Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, Wilhelm Furtwängler, cond. Live performance, Mar. 9, 1950
[1] Brünnhilde, "Was hast du erdacht, das ich erdulde?"
[2] Wotan, "Denn so kehrt der Gott sich dir ab"
Martha Mödl (s), Brünnhilde (in [1]); Ferdinand Frantz (bs-b), Wotan; RAI Rome Symphony Orchestra, Wilhelm Furtwängler, cond. EMI, live concert performance of Act III, Nov. 27, 1953
[1] Brünnhilde, "Was hast du erdacht, das ich erdulde?"
[2] Wotan, "Denn so kehrt der Gott sich dir ab"
Frida Leider (s), Brünnhilde (in [1]); Friedrich Schorr (bs-b), Wotan; Berlin State Opera Orchesstra, Leo Blech, cond. EMI, recorded Sept. 10 ("Was hast du erdacht") and June 17 ("Leb' wohl" and "Denn so kehrt der Gott"), 1927
I WISH WE COULD GO INTO HOW SIEGFRIED FOUND HIS WAY
TO THE ROCK, BUT FOR NOW LET'S JUST GET HIM BACK THERE
Note that thse are the same performances we heard in shorter form last week, with one noteworthy addition: the pretty darned fabulous one by tenor Alan Woodrow and conductor Gustav Kuhn, which I wanted to include last time but for technical reasons couldn't. (What technical reasons? Okay, my computer disc drive, undoubtedly in need of some TLC, refused to play the CD in question, even though every other CD player I plunked it into managed it. This week my computer relented long enough for me to grab the tracks I needed.)
Siegfried: Act III, Siegfried, "Wie weck' ich die Maid?" . . . Brünnhilde, "Heil dir, Sonne"
SIEGFRIED: How waken the maid,
and see her eyes gently open?
Will they not dazzle and blind?
How can I dare
to gaze on their light?
Beneath my feet
the ground seems to sway!
Anguish and yearning
conquer my courage;
on my heart beating wildly
trembles my hand!
Am I a coward?
Is this what fear is?
O mother! Mother --
your bold fearless child --
a woman lies here in sleep,
["im Schlafe liegt eine Frau"]
and she now has taught me to fear!
How conquer my fear?
How steel my heart?
If I am to awaken myself,
first the maid must awaken.
[As he approaches the sleeper again, he is again filled with tender emotion at the sight of her. He bends over her.]
Sweet and quivering,
her lovely mouth.
A gentle gladness
charms fear from my heart!
Ah! how enchanting
her warm, fragrant breath!
[As if in despair] Awaken! Awaken! Holiest maid!
["Erwache! Erwache! Heiliges Weib!"]
[He gazes upon her.]
She hears me not.
[Slowly, with tense and urgent expression]
Then lilfe I shall gather
from lips filled with sweetness --
what though I die by this kiss!
[He sinks, as if dying, on the sleeping figure, and with closed eyes presses his lips to hers.]
"Awakening" music
[BRÜNNHILDE slowly rises to a sitting position, She raises her arms in solemn gestures, greeting the heaven and earth that now she sees again.]
BRÜNNHILDE: Hail, bright sunlight!
["Heil dir, Sonne!"]
Hail, fair sky!
Hail, o radiant day!
Long was my sleep,
but now I am awake:
Who is the man
wakes me to life?
SIEGFRIED [deeply moved by her look and her voice, stands as if rooted to the spot]:
I have braved the dangers
blazing round your rock;
from your head I unclasped the helm.
Siegfried wakes you,
brings you to life.
BRÜNNHILDE [sitting straight up]: Wotan, hear me!
Hear me, world!
Hear me, glorious nature!
My sleep is at an end;
awake, I see
Siegfried! Siegfried
has brought me life!
SIEGFRIED [breaks out in ecstasy]: I bless my mother,
giving me birth!
bless the earth
that gave me my strength!
Now I behold those eyes,
bright stars which laugh on my joy!
BRÜNNHILDE [overlapping, in impassioned accents]:
I bless your mother,
giving you birth!
bless the earth,
that gave you your strength.
Your eyes alone could behold me,
my heart to you alone wakes!
[Each remains in radiant, rapt contemplation of the other.]-- singing translation by Andrew Porter,used in the English National Opera performance
[in English] ["A woman lies here in sleep" at 2:09; "Awaken! Awaken! Holiest maid!" at 4:48; "Awakening" music at 7:36; "Hail, bright sunshine" at 9:55] Alberto Remedios (t), Siegfried; Rita Hunter (s), Brunnhilde; Sadler's Wells Opera Orchestra, Reginald Goodall, cond. EMI-Chandos, recorded live, August 1973
["Im Schlafe liegt eine Frau" at 1:39; "Erwache! Erwache! Heiliges Weib!" at 3:47; "Awakening" music at 6:36; "Heil dir, Sonne" at 9:00] Siegfried Jerusalem (t), Siegfried; Anne Evans (s), Brünnhilde; Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Daniel Barenboim, cond. Teldec, recorded live, June-July 1992
["Im Schlafe liegt eine Frau" at 1:35; "Erwache! Erwache! Heiliges Weib!" at 3:39; "Awakening" music at 6:17; "Heil dir, Sonne" at 8:10] Wolfgang Windgassen (t), Siegfried; Birgit Nilsson (s), Brünnhilde; Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Karl Böhm, cond. Philips, recorded live, July 1966
[from "Awakening" music only; "Heil dir, Sonne" at 1:07; again, scrunched to fit the 78 side] Frida Leider (s), Brünnhilde; Rudolf Laubenthal (t), Siegfried; Berlin State Opera Orchestra, Leo Blech, cond. EMI, recorded Aug. 27, 1927
["Im Schlafe liegt eine Frau" at 1:38; "Erwache! Erwache! Heiliges Weib!" at 3:35; "Awakening" music at 5:56; "Heil dir, Sonne" at 7:19] Lauritz Melchior (t), Siegfried; Florence Easton (s), Brünnhilde; London Symphony Orchestra* (up to "Awakening" music) and Covent Garden Orchestra† (from there), Robert Heger, cond. EMI, recorded *May 12, 1930 and †May 29, 1932
["Im Schlafe liegt eine Frau" at 1:06; "Erwache! Erwache! Heiliges Weib!" at 2:39; "Awakening" music at 5:11; "Heil dir, Sonne" at 7:03] Lauritz Melchior (t), Siegfried; Kirsten Flagstad (s), Brünnhilde; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Artur Bodanzky, cond. Live performance, Jan. 30, 1937
["Im Schlafe liegt eine Frau" at 1:35; "Erwache! Erwache! Heiliges Weib!" at 3:27; "Awakening" music at 5:56; "Heil dir, Sonne" at 7:50] Set Svanholm (t), Siegfried; Kirsten Flagstad (s), Brünnhilde; Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, Wilhelm Furtwängler, cond. Live performance, Mar. 23, 1950
["Im Schlafe liegt eine Frau" at 1:41; "Erwache! Erwache! Heiliges Weib!" at 3:39; "Awakening" music at 6:14; "Heil dir, Sonne" at 8:15] Günther Treptow (t), Siegfried; Gertrude Grob-Prandl (s), Brünnhilde; Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Rudolf Moralt, cond. Myto, live concert performance, 1949
["Im Schlafe liegt eine Frau" at 1:40; "Erwache! Erwache! Heiliges Weib!" at 3:35; "Awakening" music at 6:01; "Heil dir, Sonne" at 7:35] Alan Woodrow (t), Siegfried; Elisabeth-Maria Wachutka (s), Brünnhilde; Tyrol Festival Orchestra, Gustav Kuhn, cond. Arte Nova, recorded live, July 1999
UPDATE: ABOUT OUR SIEGFRIED PERFORMANCES
I had started writing some performance notes, which I promised in last week's short-version post of the Siegfried clips, and already it was bloating to a scale that wouldn't have been of much use to anyone. As I may have mentioned, in the current format of Blogger, my bloghost, there is no way I know of to view audio clips as part of a post prior to publishing the damned thing, which is one reason I'm inclined to publish a skeletal post that has all or most of its audio clips in place -- at least then I both test them and actually listen to them, and once I can do that, it's all too likely that complications will ensue.
So for now, just some quick notes. [At least that's what I was imagining when I wrote this. Ha! -- Ed.] In choosing these performances, even though Brünnhilde does make her appearance in the designated selection, I was focused mostly on the Siegfrieds, because the Young Siegfried is so hard to cast and is so crucial to our sense of the opera. If the performer can't generate some personal involvement from the audience, some sense of interest and curiosity, sympathy and empathy, Siegfried can too easily come across as bratty, muscle-brained young thug, which can reduce Siegfried and Götterdämmerung If we consider that Wagner's first thought for what turned into the tetralogy The Ring of the Nibelung was a music drama to be called Siegfried's Death, our perspective is kind of terminally skewed if our attitude is that the goon gets pretty much what he deserves.
As with the other killer Wagner tenor roles -- Tannhäuser, Tristan, to a slightly lesser extent Parsifal -- the stupendous vocal demands start with the range, power, and stamina of a Heldentenor, projecting comfortably over that very full orchestra, with at the same time the ability to sing genuinely beautifully (as a check, I've included the time cue for that gorgeously melting line "Im Schlafe liegt eines Weib" ("In sleep lies a woman"), one of the lovely opportunities Wagner provided for his Siegfried to command, stimulate, and gratify sympathetic audience sympathetic.
Which is one of the things that's so interesting about the scene of Siegfried's face-to-helmet encounter with the sleeping Brünnhilde, of which we're hearing only the final stages, which is still enough for us to appreciate the performance challenge of finding ways to express the character's urgent desire to understand the world around him, for which his isolated and malicious upbringing has given him no tools except his own senses and native reasoning power, as deployed amid the dense, remote forest in which he has grown up with no human contact other than that of his unspeakable "foster father," the plotting Nibelung Mime.
Among our Siegfrieds we've got a few who -- I'm thinking of Alberto Remedios, Siegfried Jerusalem, and Alan Woodrow -- may not be authentic Heldentenors but manage this music, and indeed the role, with considerable strength, tonal beauty, and sympathy. The Siegfried was the first of the Goodall-nurtured Sadler's Wells Opera Wagner performances to be recorded, just before the company changed its name to English National Opera, and it still speaks eloquently for what Goodall and his team accomplished. Remedios was a major contributor to that team, having sung Walther von Stolzing in Goodall's Mastersingers, which launched the whole seemingly mad Sadler's Wells Wagner project, and he would sing and record both Siegfrieds and Siegmund. (Similarly, another core team member, bass-baritone Norman Bailey, who had been Goodall's eloquent Hans Sachs, would sing and record all three Wotans.)
Jerusalem was impressive as Siegmund, and is impressive as Siegfried -- a really first-class piece of singing. Ditto Woodrow; you don't expect a tenor to come out of nowhere and blow you away as Siegfried, but he delivers -- and in the Götterdämmerung recorded the following summer as well. (I'm sorry to say I don't know what became of him after that.) The casting continuity is welcome, in that the Tyrol Festival Ring, recorded live an opera per year over the period 1998-2001, has three Brünnhildes and three Wotans, but fortunately a first-class conductor in the festival's founder, Gustav Kuhn.
I wouldn't quite include Wolfgang Windgassen in this group; a different sort of Siegfried -- he was in it for the long haul, and learned how to coax his voice into the role and do so credibly all over the world for a decade and a half. I can't say that the actual sound he produced generated a lot of either aural pleasure or character sympathy. That said, I find what we hear here surprisingly moving, even beautifully sung -- and remember, we're hearing him live here, in Act III of an opera that has made strenuous demands in both of the earlier acts and the hardly lightweight confrontation with Wotan that immediately precedes this scene. (And for the record, this isn't the supposedly "fresher"-voiced Windgassen of the '50s but Windgassen at 52, four years older even than when he stepped in at the last minute to save the Solti-Decca Siegfried project, the opera's first commercial recording, for which he had been conspicuously passed over in the original casting.
Which leaves us with three legitimate Heldentenors. Probably the size and power of Set Svanholm's voice made a seriously more impressive impact in the theater than the sound isolated by microphones, but it's not hard to hear why all the leading opera companies were eager to engage him for his core roles. He could scale that big voice down too, and he wasn't at all an insensitive singer. I think we get a good appreciation of the kind of character implied by the writing, if maybe not the ultimate degree of pleasure in the vocalism.
There's plenty of pleasure in the vocalism of Günther Treptow, whom we heard so impressively as Siegmund in our recent Walküre investigations -- from this same 1949 Vienna radio Ring cycle, in which he sang not only his established role of Siegmund but both Siegfrieds, and opened a lot of ears in the music world, not least those of Wilhelm Furtwängler, who was in the audience for the Walküre Act I performance and was so excited that he set in motion Treptow's casting as Siegmund for his 1950 La Scala Ring cycle, among other engagements. The Siegfrieds seem to me as impressive vocally as the Siegmund, and for a while at least Treptow sounded like a bona fide successor to Melchior, albeit not as finished in his phrasing as the great Dane.
Of course when we turn to Melchior, the competition seems more unequal than we may perhaps have expected. For so long on records the Young Siegfried seemed almost a Melchior-or-nothing proposition, and despite the legitimate alternatives we have now, when we go back to the genuine article and hear the range of what Melchior could do, throughout his vocal range, at every dynamic, with such seeming ease and that consuming sense of engagement with the character, well, there really still isn't any real contest. I thought it would be interesting to set the live Met performance alongside the long-famous studio recording, and the performances, though by no means identical, tell essentially the same story, so I've had little hesitation in including them both.
As for the Brünnhildes, heard here at one of their signature moments, we again have the trinity of Leider, Flagstad, and Nilsson, all in excellent representative form (Flagstad sounding fine at 41, opposite Melchior, and positively magisterial at 54 with Furtwängler). I'm also quite happy with Rita Hunter, the Brünnhilde for all of Goodall's Ring (and the other core member of his Sadler's Wells-ENO Wagner ensemble), and Anne Evans, Daniel Barenboim's Bayreuth-Teldec Brünnhilde.
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