On the pleasures of getting lostin Götterdämmerung: revisiting the path to here, Part 2

SUNDAY 8:30pm UPDATE: After the earlier fillings-in, mostly around the Götterdämmerung and Walküre selections, I've added some Siegfried performance notes, and barring some likely (hoped for?) post cleanup, that should be about it!

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]

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

We hear Beethoven reference Florestan and Leonore in his first overture for Fidelio, and we hear Leonore make a crucial decision

"Fidelio" (Christine Brewer) and Rocco (Arthur Woodley) in Act I of Fidelio, San Francisco, 2005 (photo by Terence McCarthy)

ROCCO: Make haste, dig on;
it won't be long before he comes.
LEONORE [trying to view the prisoner, aside]:
Whoever you may be, I will save you,
by God, by God you won't be a victim!
For sure, for sure I'll loose your chains;
I will, you poor man, free you!

Kirsten Flagstad (s), Leonore; with Alexander Kipnis (bs), Rocco; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Bruno Walter, cond. Live performance, Feb. 22, 1941

Sena Jurinac (s), Leonore; with Gottlob Frick (bs), Rocco; Covent Garden Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. Testament, recorded live, Feb. 24, 1961

Helga Dernesch (s), Leonore; with Karl Ridderbusch (bs), Rocco; Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. EMI, recorded 1970

Birgit Nilsson (s), Leonore; with Gottlob Frick (bs), Rocco; Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra, Erich Kleiber, cond. Broadcast performance, June 1956

Birgit Nilsson (s), Leonore; with Oskar Czerwenka (bs), Rocco; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Karl Böhm, cond. Live performance, Feb. 13, 1960

Birgit Nilsson (s), Leonore; with Kurt Böhme (bs), Rocco; Vienna Philharmonic, Lorin Maazel, cond. Decca, recorded March 1964

Birgit Nilsson (s), Leonore; with Franz Crass (bs), Rocco; RAI Rome Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Broadcast performance, Mar. 17, 1970

by Ken

In last week's post, "What's that, a trumpet? We hear two Great Moments in Act II to prepare to root around further in Beethoven's overtures for Fidelio," I explained that we were originally going to hear not two but three "Great Moments in Act II" of Fidelio. The deal was going to be to have you reckon which of the three were referenced in any of the four overtures Beethoven composed for the opera, when in fact only two of them were: No. 1, the imprisoned Florestan grappling with his past in his dungeon; and No. 3, the assistant jailer "Fidelio" revealing "himself" as the secret prisoner's wife in a desperate attempt to save her husband from the revenge of his enemy Don Pizarro.

This week, as I mentioned in the earlier "Taste of this week's post," in addition to continuing our investigation of those overtures, we fill in Great Moment No. 2, which I've summarized above as "Leonore makes a life-changing decision that really doesn't require much thought." Above we've heard the critical moment, and eventually we're going to hear the whole of this little "melodrama and duet," immediately following Florestan's Act II-opening monologue. It's another in a series of moments Leonore has worked so hard to achieve in the long time that she has been searching for her vanished husband Don Florestan. I don't believe we're told how long she has been searching, but it's long enough that everyone except Leonore believes he's dead.


I'D SAY THIS IS THE "CLIMAX" OF THE SCENE, EXCEPT
LEONORE STILL DOESN'T KNOW WHETHER IT REALLY IS

What's that, a trumpet? We hear two Great Moments in Act II to prepare to root around further in Beethoven's overtures for Fidelio

"Töt' erst sein Weib" ("First kill his wife"): In this presumably, er, staged shot featuring the stars of Decca's 1964 Fidelio recording, Birgit Nilsson and James McCracken (with Lorin Maazel conducting), Leonore shields Florestan from his would-be executioner.

Do you hear a trumpet?

We pick up deep into Act II of Fidelio, in the secret deep-underground dungeon where the prison governor Don Pizarro has been keeping his old enemy Don Florestan. Pizarro is about to take his final revenge on the dastardly truth-teller (it's hard to believe, but there were olden times when certain depraved villains regarded truth-telling as subversive to the proper order of things). At the last moment the young assistant jailer Fidelio, present in the dungeon with his boss, the head jailer Rocco, steps in front of the prisoner to shield him, and makes a startling revelation.

LEONORE [shielding her husband]: First kill his wife!
DON PIZARRO: His wife?
ROCCO: His wife?
FLORESTAN: My wife?
LEONORE [to FLORESTAN]: Yes, here see Leonore!
FLORESTAN: Leonore!
LEONORE [to the others]: I am his wife,
I have sworn comfort for him,
destruction for you!
DON PIZARRO: His wife?
ROCCO: His wife?
FLORESTAN: My wife?
DON PIZARRO: What incredible courage!
FLORESTAN [overlapping]: My blood stands still with joy!
ROCCO [overlapping]: My blood stands still with fear!
LEONORE [overlapping, aside]: I defy his rage!
Destruction for him,
I defy his rage!
DON PIZARRO: Ha, Shall I tremble before a woman?
Then I sacrifice them both to my fury!
You have shared life with him,
now share death with him!
LEONORE [overlapping]: Death I have sworn you,
first you must stab this heart. [Suddenly brandishes a pistol.]
One more sound -- and you are dead!
The trumpet sounds from the tower.
LEONORE: Ah, you are saved! Almighty God!
FLORESTAN [overlapping]: Ah, I am saved! Almighty God!
DON PIZARRO [overlapping]: Ha! The Minister! Death and damnation!
ROCCO [overlapping]: O! what is that? Righteous God!
[PIZARRO and ROCCO stand dumbfounded. LEONORE and FLORESTAN embrace.]
The trumpet sounds again, but louder.
[JAQUINO, two oficers, and soldiers bearing torches appear at the uppermost opening on the staircase.]
JAQUINO: Father Rocco! Father Rocco! The Lord Minister has arrived!
ROCCO [joyful and surprised, aside]: Praised be God!

[1st trumpet call at 0:53, no following spoken dialogue] Birgit Nilsson (s), Leonore; Paul Schoeffler (bs-b), Don Pizarro; Gottlob Frick (bs), Rocco; Hans Hopf (t), Florestan; Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra, Erich Kleiber, cond. Broadcast performance, June 1956

[1st trumpet call at 0:46] Birgit Nilsson (s), Leonore; Hermann Uhde (bs-b), Don Pizarro; Oskar Czerwenka (bs), Rocco; Jon Vickers (t), Florestan; Charles Anthony (spkr), Jaquino; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Karl Böhm, cond. Live performance, Feb. 13, 1960

[1st trumpet call at 0:57] Birgit Nilsson (s), Leonore; Tom Krause (b), Don Pizarro; Kurt Böhme (bs), Rocco; James McCracken (t), Florestan; Donald Grobe (spkr), Jaquino; Vienna Philharmonic, Lorin Maazel, cond. Decca, recorded March 1964

[1st trumpet call at 0:59, no following spoken dialogue] Birgit Nilsson (s), Leonore; Theo Adam (bs-b), Don Pizarro; Franz Crass (bs), Rocco; Ludovic Spiess (t), Florestan; RAI Rome Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Broadcast performance, Mar. 17, 1970

by Ken

The next post here was supposed to be "Fidelio by the numbers: How do Three Great Moments in Act II go into four overtures?" -- as forecast in last week's tease-post. However, even though most of the elements for that post have been pretty much ready to roll all week, as soon as I figure out how to do it, my revised thinking is that maybe we better stick closer to the overtures, the four of them, that Beethoven wrote for his only opera. We're going to start by re-presenting the overtures in the same form we heard them last Sunday, despite what I believe I described as two quite different kinds of "temporal anomalies" in this seemingly straightforward-as-can-be presentation of them.

Quick nomenclatural note: It's well known that Beethoven preferred Leonore as the opera's title, which is how the first three overtures her wrote have come down to us as Leonore whatever. I happen to think Fidelio is a better title, referencing not Leonore personally but the character she has invented and impersonated for the long, arduous, and seemingly hopeless search for her husband, missing and presumed dead by everyone except her. But my preference aside, the finally revised version was presented as Fidelio, and since 1814 Fidelio it has been.

THE FOUR OVERTURES FOR FIDELIO

Leonore Overture No. 1, Op. 138

Leonore Overture No. 2, Op. 72a

Leonore Overture No. 3, Op. 72b

Fidelio Overture,  Op. 72c

Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Sir Colin Davis, cond.

To return to Caballé for a moment (a moment of love-death) --

How softly and gently
he smiles,
how sweetly
his eyes open -
can you see, my friends,
do you not see it?
How he glows
ever brighter,
raising himself high
amidst the stars?
Do you not see it?
How his heart
swells with courage,
gushing full and majestic
in his breast?
How in tender bliss
sweet breath
gently wafts
from his lips -
Friends! Look!
Do you not feel and see it?
Do I alone hear
this melody
so wondrously
and gently
sounding from within him,
in bliss lamenting,
all-expressing,
gently reconciling,
piercing me,
soaring aloft,
its sweet echoes
resounding about me?
Are they gentle
aerial waves
ringing out clearly,
surging around me?
Are they billows
of blissful fragrance?
As they seethe
and roar about me,
shall I breathe,
shall I give ear?
Shall I drink of them,
plunge beneath them?
Breathe my life away
in sweet scents?
In the heaving swell,
in the resounding echoes,
in the universal stream
of the world-breath -
to drown,
to founder -
unconscious -
utmost rapture!

Montserrat Caballé (s), Isolde; Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra, Alain Lombard, cond. Erato, recorded September 1977

by Ken

We're in I-forget-how-many-levels of digression from our serial remembrance of Montserrat Caballé. As of last week's post ("Word is that 'Today we are not shocked by Salome.' Really?") we've been drawn in -- by way of Caballé's (in my experience) unique recording of Salome -- to what seems to me the inescapable shockfulness of the 40-year-old Richard Strauss's breakthrough opera, which even when we're done we're going to have to pursue, without a Caballé connection, into the equally inescapable shockfulness of the Strauss opera that followed it, Elektra.

So this week I thought we'd pause that and return for a moment to just-plain-Caballé, and a recording I'd been saving for the final installment of this series, whatever and whenever that happens. Which, actually, we've now just heard: that Erato studio recording of Isolde's "Liebestod," which for me shows beautifully what Caballé could do when the big, beautiful voice was really well controlled technically and interpretively. It is, I think, just a gorgeous performance, and gorgeous in the ways that were specifically hers.


SO, AS LONG AS WE'RE HERE --

I thought we might as well bring back Liebestod performances we've already heard (I'm now enmeshed in what turns out to be the monumental job of technically rehabilitating the 2000 post that was the source for a number of them) and adding a couple more. We've got an assortment here: a couple of the all-time great Isoldes (Flagstad heard in her shimmering prime, Nilsson in what's still my favorite Tristan recording of hers), some singers who sensibly never essayed the complete role plus some who didn't but you wish had.

WAGNER: Tristan und Isolde: Act III, Isolde, "Mild und leise wie er lächelt" (Liebestod)

After all, the Page in Salome does warn that horrible things are going to happen

Salome (Angela Denoke at Covent Garden, 2010) finally gets to kiss the mouth of the prophet Jochanaan, who may have wished he'd let her do it when his head was still attached to him.

by Ken

It was as part of our Caballé-remembrance series that, last week, we ventured into Salome ("Some out-of-this-world sounds from a singer who proves mistress of a surprising role"). Now, having ventured there, I don't see how we can leave without some further exploring, and for this week's installment we're not even going to have Caballé at the center -- though I think you'll notice, if you compare her with the (very fine) other Salomes we'll be hearing, that she's plugged into the role in a way that is very much her own.

Just to recap, the opera is set on a terrace of the palace of Herod, the tetrarch of Judea, inside which a great feast is taking place. For a while the audience is invited to observe the wild infatuation of a handsome young captain, Narraboth, with the princess Salome, daughter of Herodias and stepdaughter (as well as niece) of the tetrarch (her father, Herodias's first husband, was Herod's half-brother), and we've been introduced to some of the many palace functionaries and guests who populate the terrace (and the opera), including a page of Herodias (presumably male) who appears as fixated on Narraboth as the latter is on Salome. We've also heard briefly from a still-invisible character: Safely locked away in a heavily guarded cistern is the prophet Jochanaan, aka John the Baptist, who despite his unfortunate incaraceration voices a soaring brand of religious ecstasy, for which Strauss found an appropriately ecstatic musical format, even as the prophet details the sea of human corruption all around.

Last week we heard Salome make her escape from the banquet to the terrace, and this week we're going to overlap a clip we heard last week, so we can immediately hear Salome switching on a dime from pouting rage to angelically youthful sweetness. One point to note: As far as I know we're not given an age for Salome, but the implication seems fairly clear that she's still a teenager, and again I would call attention to the young-girlishness that comes out so strongly in Strauss's musical setting, at least if the singer can make it come out, which it seems to me Caballé did, at least in the RCA recording of the opera conducted by Erich Leinsdorf, better than any other Salome I've heard. Again, the sound that's made by a big-voiced singer capable of scaling the voice down has an intensity and excitement that a smaller-voiced singer can't match -- as a matter of fact, as I think I've already mentioned, Birgit Nilsson, the greatest of the post-Welitsch Salomes, who pretty much obliterated the competition in the flaming outbursts, did some of her most memorable work in Salome's quiet moments.


LET'S HEAR SOME MUSIC ALREADY!

I swear, Caballé and Domingo were electrifying that night, but I will still need to scrounge to give you an idea of what I remember

AMELIA: Grant me, o Lord,
strength to cleanse my heart
and allay the inflamed
throbbing in my breast.

by Ken

No, there's nothing wrong with your computer, or your ears -- there's no singing in this audio clip. What it is -- in what I think is a pretty special performance (we'll talk more about this later) -- is a chunk of the orchestral introduction to Act II of Verdi's A Masked Ball (Un Ballo in maschera), which so powerfully recalls this crucial moment from Act I, Scene 2, when Amelia visits the fortune-teller Ulrica seeking help with a desperate problem: that she's hopelessly in love with her husband's best friend, an unfortunate complication being that the proceedings happen to be overhead by that self-same best friend, who happens to share that very passion, and who, although he too knows that he mustn't act on it, regrettably doesn't necessarily not do things he knows he mustn't, self-denial not being his strong suit.


LET'S HEAR THIS IMPASSIONED MOMENT FOR REAL

Preview: Brünnhilde asks, "Who am I if I were not your will?" Question: Is it ever OK for a daughter to say such a thing to her father?

Deborah Voigt as Brünnhilde and Bryn Terfel as Wotan in the new Met production of Die Walküre, 2011

BRÜNNHILDE [answers WOTAN softly]:
To Wotan's will you're speaking;
you can say what you will;
what am I,
if not your will alone?

-- English singing translation by Andrew Porter

[A]

[B]

[C]

[D]

Our four Brünnhildes could be drawn from this list (in alphabetical order): Kirsten Flagstad, Rita Hunter, Birgit Nilsson, and Astrid Varnay

by Ken

There are, of course, parents who truly don't want their children to be independent -- indeed, whole cultures that depend on squelching any such impulse. But through time there have also been lots of seemingly enlightened parents who wish this devoutly, as long as said independence leads the children to think and behave exactly as they would wish. It doesn't usually work out this way. It's a dilemma.

Now Wotan has particular reasons for needing independence in his children, which we won't go into now, except to wonder how feasible it is for his own flesh and blood to be truly independent of him. This week we're continuing to deal with his unbearable pain at being forced to part with his Valkyrie daughter Brünnhilde, as he does in the great Farewell at the end of Die Walküre, which we heard last week ("Can we fully feel Wotan's pain knowing that it's mostly self-inflicted?"). It's after he has been bitch-slapped by his wife, Fricka, over the whole mess he's gotten into, dating back to his flagrant breach of contract with the giants Fasolt and Fafner, violating a contract he never had any intention of honoring, that he finds himself in dialogue with Brünnhilde.

Brünnhilde has found her father in a state of despair unlike anything she has ever seen, and has implored him to open up to her. He responded with one of the musical literature's most extraordinary outbursts -- an expression of rage and self-pity (which we're going to hear in a moment). Getting a bit of control of himself, he asked whether unburdening himself might not cost him the grip of his will. She responds with the extraordinary passage we've just heard.


LET'S HEAR OUR FOUR BRÜNNHILDES AGAIN,
THIS TIME PROPERLY IDENTIFIED