The Minister is coming! The Minister is coming! Don Fernando and the lesson of Fidelio, Part 1

-- from Beethoven's setting of Schiller's "Ode 'To Joy',"
in the final movement of the Ninth Symphony

Jessye Norman, soprano; Brigitte Fassbaender, mezzo-soprano; Plácido Domingo, tenor; Walter Berry, bass-baritone; Vienna State Opera Concert Chorus, Vienna Philharmonic, Karl Böhm, cond. DG, recorded 1980


NOW, WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH DON FERNANDO?

DON FERNANDO: Our best of kings' will and pleasure
leads me here to you, poor people,
that I may uncover the night of crime,
which black and heavy encompassed all.
No longer kneel down like slaves,
stern tyranny be far from me!
A brother seeks his brothers,
and gladly helps, if help he can.
CHORUS: Hail the day! Hail the hour!
DON FERNANDO: A brother seeks his brothers,
and gladly helps, if help he can. . . .

-- from the final scene of Fidelio

Martti Talvela (bs), Don Fernando; Leipzig Radio Chorus, Staatskapelle Dresden, Karl Böhm, cond. DG, recorded c1968

by Ken

Even a seasoned operagoer may be forgiven for forgetting, even when Don Fernando appears at the top of a Fidelio cast list, as he often does, just who the heck he is. The fact is, if you add to what we've just heard a few lines we're going to hear in a while and just a few more we heard a few weeks ago ("'In this life scoundrels always receive their just desserts': Now that we know the lesson of Don Giovanni, how does it square with the lesson of Fidelio?," June 28), you've got the entire role!

And listen to who we've got singing it! Yes, it's early-career Martti Talvela, but he'd already established himself as a star, and just listen to that voice. There's none of that yawny, slidey quality that settled in dispiritingly quickly. (A reference point: the King Marke he sang in the 1965 live-from-Bayreuth Tristan und Isolde with Birgit Nilsson and Wolfgang Windgassen (and Christa Ludwig the spectacular Brangäne, one of my favorites of her recordings, conducted by, well, as it happens, Karl Böhm.) Here that ringing, booming bass slashes and soars and I'm going to say dazzles with its strength and beauty and ease. I think I need to revisit some more of those early recordings!


BUT THEN, "A-LIST" CASTING OF THE ROLE
IS MORE THE RULE THAN THE EXCEPTION

John Macurdy (1929-2020): as Verdi's King of Egypt and Grand Inquisitor, Wagner's Fafner (x2), and Mozart's Commendatore

LATE, LATE THURSDAY UPDATE: Zounds, I think we've got the whole thing in place (though without an even minimally respectable proofreading, and I expected to have more things to say along the way, but I'm afraid this may have to be good enough).
WELL, ONE MORE THING (from the wee hours of Friday): Just when I thought we were done, it occurred to me that the order had to be switched, moving the Don Giovanni excerpts, until then sandwiched between the Verdis and the Wagners, to the end. By happy coincidence this put the five performances we're sampling to represent John Macurdy's career in chronological order. What really happened, though, is that once the Don Giovanni texts were finally in place, it suddenly became obvious that we had to finish with Don Giovanni.



OK, this isn't the king we want -- it's King Heinrich of Brabant (Lohengrin) rather than the King of Egypt (Aida) -- but a king's a king, right? And a sturdy all-purpose bass like the late John Macurdy is gonna sing a bunch of kings, not to mention priests, and of course papas -- and the odd inquisitor. Photo by Louis Mélançon/Metropolitan Opera

From the Triumphal Scene (Act II, Scene 2) of Verdi's Aida


John Macurdy (bs), King of Egypt; Carlo Bergonzi (t), Radamès; Metropolitan Opera Chorus and Orchestra, Georg Solti, cond. Broadcast performance, Dec. 7, 1963

[NOTE: Yeah, the Italian original of the King's first line should be italicized, but by the time I noticed this, fixing it would have required retyping the whole danged thing. -- Ed.]

by Ken

In the prepost to this remembrance of John Macurdy, I said we'd be hearing this 38-year Met mainstay in three characteristic roles, but in the event it'll be four or possibly five: two Verdis (the King of Egypt and the Grand Inquisitor), one Mozart (the Commendatore), and either one or two Wagners, depending on how we count the Rheingold and Siegfried Fafners.

It's seems only right that we begin with the King of Egypt. I think it was the first role I heard him in, and I'm pretty sure the first I saw him in, not long after he joined the Met. For the decades following he and Paul Plishka, whose Met career overlapped his , were pleasant constants in my early decades of Met experience.

It's interesting, though, to go back and hear just how fine a sound Macurdy made back then as the King, both above and in this additional Aida clip.

The King prepares the Egyptians for war

John Macurdy (1929-2020)

In Act II of Götterdämmerung (in Seattle, 1984) John Macurdy as the sleeping Hagen is "visited" by his late, little-lamented father, Alberich (Julian Patrick). Photo by Chris Bennion

by Ken

Sorry, searching quickly I couldn't find John Macurdy as the giant Fafner in Wagner's Das Rheingold, but I think Hagen is a not-too-bad substitute. I'm working on a more proper remembrance of that fine, ever-dependable bass, who died May 7 at 91, having logged 1,001 performances (in 62 roles!) at the Met between 1962 and 2000. At the moment it's looking like we'll hear from both the Rheingold and Siegfried Fafners and two Met standbys: the Commendatore in Don Giovanni and the King of Egypt in Aida. (For the record, we did wind up hearing these roles, and another as well: the Grand Inquisitor in Don Carlos. With an unexpected last-minute twist in the order of presentation.)

For now, though, I couldn't resist sharing this wonderful rendering of one of those gorgeous little set pieces that stud the Ring cycle, in which Fafner tries to explain to his more sentimental, thick-headed brother Fasolt the tangible value, as far as the gods are concerned, of having their beloved goddess Freia in their midst.



John Macurdy (bs), Fafner; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Sixten Ehrling, cond. Broadcast performance, Feb. 15, 1975


WELL, MAYBE JUST ONE MORE TEASE:
Is this the most dramatic 40 seconds in all opera?

John Macurdy (b), Commendatore; Orchestra of the Théâtre National de l'Opéra de Paris, Lorin Maazel, cond. CBS-Sony, recorded June-July 1978


NOTE THAT TONIGHT'S MET FREE "NIGHTLY OPERA STREAM" --

is a January 1986 Lohengrin conducted by James Levine with Macurdy as King Heinrich (and Eva Marton as Elsa, Peter Hofmann as Lohengrin, Leonie Rysanek as Ortrud, and Leif Roar as Telramund).

#

The troubles of Fricka and Wotan, part 3: Golden apples or no, these gods sure have grown older (preliminary version)

Christa Ludwig as Fricka and James Morris as
Wotan in Das Rheingold, at the Met in 1994

Remember these bits, which we heard back in the first installment of our expanded listen to mezzo Yvonne Minton?

FRICKA: (1) Dearest sister, sweetest delight,
are you restored to me?
(2) See how our pure one stands humiliated and ashamed:
her anguished look mutely pleads for release.
Wicked man, to ask this of a loved one!

-- from Scene 4 (the final scene) of Das Rheingold

Yvonne Minton (ms), Fricka; Staatskapelle Dresden, Marek Janowski, cond. Eurodisc-BMG, recorded Dec. 8-11, 1980


Irene Dalis (ms), Fricka; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, cond. Live performance, Dec. 16, 1961


Mignon Dunn (ms), Fricka; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Sixten Ehrling, cond. Live performance, Feb. 15, 1975


Christa Ludwig (ms), Fricka; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, James Levine, cond. DG, recorded Apr.-May 1988
[To clarify: While we later heard singers besides Ms. Minton sing these bits (in longer clips), this is our first hearing of Dalis, Dunn, and Ludwig in this music.]

by Ken

O course by the end of Das Rheingold Wotan, at the cost of forking over both the Tarnhelm and the Ring, has earned back his sister-in-law, Freia, from the custody of the Giants Fasolt and Fafner, which presumably means that the gods will once again have free access to the golden apples, the golden apples that grow in Freia's garden, which have heretofore kept them perpetually young. And so, once again, they should in theory no longer be aging.

Except that, with the passage of time and the accumulation of life experience, they clearly do age in at least some ways.

Now hear this:

FRICKA [pausing with dignity before WOTAN]:
Here in the mountains where you hide
to escape your wife's view,
here in solitude I seek you out,
that you may promise me help.
WOTAN: What troubles Fricka,
let her announce freely.
FRICKA: I have learned of Hunding's distress;
he called on me for vengeance:
the guardian of wedlock heard him,
promised severely to punish the deed
of the shameless impious pair
who so boldly wronged the husband.

-- Fricka's next appearance, in Act II of Die Walküre

Yvonne Minton (ms), Fricka; Theo Adam (bs-b), Wotan; Staatskapelle Dresden, Marek Janowski, cond. Eurodisc-BMG, recorded Aug. 22-29, 1981

Irene Dalis (ms), Fricka; Otto Edelmann (bs-b), Wotan; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, cond. Live performance, Dec. 23, 1961

Mignon Dunn (ms), Fricka; Donald McIntyre (bs-b), Wotan; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Sixten Ehrling, cond. Live performance, Mar. 1, 1975

Christa Ludwig (ms), Fricka; James Morris (bs-b), Wotan; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, James Levine, cond. DG, recorded April 1987

Wow, that is one giant leap, for mankind and womankind and every other kind of kind. Though our second Rheingold bit above isn't quite the last thing we hear from Fricka in Das Rheingold, it's close. And the Walküre bit is definitely the first thing we hear from her following the long gap between the operas. In a bit we're going to be more precise about the contexts of all of our bits, which means going back over a stretch of interchange we already heard last week, this time breaking it down a bit, as we ponder the obvious question --


HOW THE HECK DID WE (AND OF COURSE
THEY) GET FROM POINT A TO POINT B?

Most of this is ready to go (at least I think it's most of it; these things rarely work out so easily, though), but for now I have to ask you to check back.

#

The troubles of Fricka and Wotan, part 2: He's always out making a big deal -- big deal!

from Scene 2 of Das Rheingold

FRICKA: A splendid dwelling, beautifully appointed,
might tempt you to tarry here and rest.
But you in building an abode
thought only of defenses and battlements.

Yvonne Minton (ms), Fricka; Staatskapelle Dresden, Marek Janowski, cond. Eurodisc-BMG, recorded Dec. 8-11, 1980

Mignon Dunn (ms), Fricka; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Sixten Ehrling, cond. Live performance, Feb. 15, 1975

from Scene 4 of Das Rheingold

WOTAN [turning solemnly to FRICKA]:
Follow me, wife:
in Valhalla dwell with me.

Friedrich Schorr (b), Wotan; Berlin State Opera Orchestra, Leo Blech, cond. EMI, recorded June 17, 1927

Ferdinand Frantz (bs-b), Wotan; Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Rudolf Moralt, cond. Broadcast performance, 1948

by Ken

In the "The troubles of Fricka and Wotan, part 1: A tease for this week's post, spotlighting those troubles" (a follow-up to last week's "Yes, we're going to do a bit more Rheingold business, but first we have to solve a Mystery Baritone conundrum"), we heard a bunch of performances of the above snatches from the second and fourth of the four scenes of Das Rheingold, the first two installments in what I think of as a triptych of "Scenes from a Marriage" embedded in Wagner's Ring cycle: the Fricka-Wotan confrontations that reach their blow-out climax in Act II of Die Walküre.

I really tried to present both Fricka and Wotan at their human best, even if, in one of the two cases, that "best" exists mostly in the character's own head. As I mentioned in the "tease," I also tried hard to keep those moments just that, moments, but I promised that we would hear fuller, more contextual versions, and we will. First, however --

SHOULDN'T WE BACKTRACK TO ESTABLISH MORE
CLEARLY HOW WE GOT TO THIS POINT IN SCENE 2?

The troubles of Fricka and Wotan, part 1: A tease for this week's post, spotlighting those troubles

from Scene 2 of Das Rheingold:

FRICKA: A splendid dwelling, beautifully appointed,
might tempt you to tarry here and rest.
But you in building an abode
thought only of defenses and battlements.

Yvonne Minton (ms), Fricka; Staatskapelle Dresden, Marek Janowski, cond. Eurodisc-BMG, recorded Dec. 8-11, 1980

Irene Dalis (ms), Fricka; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, cond. Live performance, Dec. 16, 1961

Mignon Dunn (ms), Fricka; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Sixten Ehrling, cond. Live performance, Feb. 15, 1975

Regina Resnik (ms), Fricka; Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Rudolf Kempe, cond. Live performance, July 26, 1961

from Scene 4 of Das Rheingold

WOTAN [turning solemnly to FRICKA]:
Follow me, wife:
in Valhalla dwell with me.

Friedrich Schorr (b), Wotan; Berlin State Opera Orchestra, Leo Blech, cond. EMI, recorded June 17, 1927

Rudolf Bockelmann (bs-b), Wotan; Berlin State Opera Orchestra, Franz Alfred Schmidt, cond. Telefunken, recorded Feb. 10, 1933

Ferdinand Frantz (bs-b), Wotan; Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Rudolf Moralt, cond. Broadcast performance, 1948

George London (bs-b), Wotan; Vienna Philharmonic, George Solti, cond. Decca, recorded September 1958

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (b), Wotan; Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded December 1967

by Ken

Really, I had enough audio files ready, and a sketchy but sufficiently conscious sense of where they were going to lead us, that I should have been able to put up at least some sort of tease for this week's post bright and early this morning. And yet I didn't. Instead I blew off my schedule for the day and instead spent it playing and weighing, making still more clips and contemplating different paths through them. For once I've kind of had fun doing it. That counts for something.

Even now I can't say for sure where exactly we're going to wind up, not to mention exactly how we're going to get there. Even once I decided on something like the above array of musical excerpts, they've undergone considerable mutation, mostly (perhaps not surprisingly) in the direction of expansion. But in the end I fought the temptation to let the basic clips grow. Though we'll hear longer versions of them, for now I want to limit them to just interestingly diverse iterations of these two very small but very powerful moments.

I'm pretty sure there's going to be a significant-size "main" post yet to come this week, and possibly in more than one installment. For now, however, I'm going with this. Enjoy these morsels.

#

Yes, we're going to do a bit more Rheingold business, but first we have to solve a Mystery Baritone conundrum

Our watchword for the day: Remember the Crams!

Showbiz greats Phil Silvers and Nancy Walker catch their breath during the recording of the cast album of the Styne-Comden-Green musical Do Re Mi -- on Jan. 8, 1961, say my sources, though it's often listed as "1960." (The show opened on Dec. 26, 1960.) Of course, what I'm calling "my sources" is actually the first Web page I found which gave an actual date, so who knows? I just now found a site that says: "First LP release: December 30, 1960." Hmm, that'd make for mighty tight scheduling if the recording didn't happen till Jan. 8.)

From the OBC recording session we're going to have a special little "Sunday Classics Do Re Mi suite," whose connection to our subject will, I hope, be clear. The suite will include this song that we heard Sunday:

STYNE-COMDEN-GREEN: Do Re Mi: "Take a job" (The Crams)

Nancy Walker and Phil Silvers (Kay and Hubie Cram), vocals; OBC recording, Lehman Engel, cond. RCA, recorded Jan. 8, 1961

by Ken

As noted in the post title, in this, the "actual" post for this week, we are going to transact a bit more Das Rheingold business, continuing from Sunday's "tease" post, but maybe not so much as I was thinking when I posted that tease.

I might say that thanks to the stratagem of the tease post, and to your kind indulgence, once I had the tease posted I was able to salvage one out of the two movies I had tickets for today in the Museum of the Moving Image's current "Curators' Choice 2018" series, and better still, it was a humdinger: Paul Dano's first film as director, Wildlife, adapted from the Richard Ford novel by him and his partner, Zoe Kazan, who were both on hand for a post-screening discussion along with two actors from the terrific cast.

As I mentioned we're going to hear a little "suite" of Do Re Mi excerpts, which I think is relevant to our area of food-service inquiry. In addition, though, while I was at my clip-making, I did a couple of additional Do Re Mi numbers, written for a legit baritone. One of these numbers is quite famous; Wikipedia lists 23 performers who have also recorded it.

Act I, "I know about love" (John Henry Wheeler)

Act II, "Make someone happy" (John Henry Wheeler)

Mystery baritone (John Henry Wheeler), vocals; OBC recording, Lehman Engel, cond. RCA, recorded Jan. 8, 1961


SO WHO IS OUR HAPPY-MAKING MYSTERY BARITONE?

A tease for this week's actual post, in which we hear more from Yvonne Minton (plus maybe, uh, some other stuff)

Yvonne Minton as the Rheingold Fricka in a production by . . . no, no, I can't try to pretend that this is one of those don't-mean-no-goddamn-thing modern-style misstagings. Actually, I did find a shot of YM as the Walküre Fricka -- a kind of funny-looking one, at that -- but I thought I'd best save that for the "real" post. No apologies for depicting her as the title character of Der Rosenkavalier, though -- as we heard in last week's post spotlighting "Four variously special singers," she was a radiant Octavian.

Now, speaking of the two Frickas --

"It's very difficult to do very much with Rheingold. One just looks dignified, and you just really do what the text dictates because [Fricka] never has more than two lines at a time. There are one or two really beautiful phrases, but they are very short."

-- Yvonne Minton, in a 1981 interview with Bruce Duffie, asked how
different the roles of Fricka in Das Rheingold and Die Walküre are

And I'd guess these are among those "really beautiful phrases" --

Dearest sister, sweetest delight,
are you restored to me?

See how our pure one stands humiliated and ashamed:
her anguished look mutely pleads for release.
Wicked man, to ask this of a loved one!

Yvonne Minton (ms), Fricka; Staatskapelle Dresden, Marek Janowski, cond. Eurodisc-BMG, recorded Dec. 8-11, 1980

by Ken

Yes, I know, you don't want to hear this week's litany of woes -- you know, all the difficulties and obstructions and whatnot. I think I know how a post of some sort will come together, and the two Frickas will be at the heart of it. So enjoy this hint, and this other maybe-sort-of-hint.

JULE STYNE with BETTY COMDEN and ADOLPH GREEN:
Do Re Mi: "Take a job"


Nancy Walker (Kay) and Phil Silvers (Hubie), vocals; Original Broadway Cast recording, Lehman Engel, cond. RCA, recorded 1961


NOT SERIOUS ENOUGH FOR YOU? OKIE-DOKE --

Ghost of Sunday Classics: Bruckner 9 -- what "cathedrals of sound"? With a detour through Wagner's "Ring" cycle

BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 9 in D minor:
i. Feierlich, misterioso (Solemn, mysterious) -- opening

[A] Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Carlo Maria Giulini, cond. EMI, recorded Dec. 1-2, 1976

[B] Vienna Philharmonic, Carlo Maria Giulini, cond. DG, recorded live, June 1988

by Ken

Yes, these are the "A" and "B" performances of the opening of the Bruckner Ninth Symphony we heard in last night's preview ("We said it wasn't over till we heard Bruckner 9"), which I described as "very different (but significantly related)." Longtime readers will probably have guessed, because I've used this trick before, that the significant relationship between the performances is that they're by the same conductor, as noted in the listings above.

I want to get to the reason why I excerpted this pair of performances, but first, let me throw out a question for your consideration as we listen through the three movements of the Ninth Symphony that Bruckner actually composed. (Eventually I suppose we'll have to talk about the movement he never did compose, a finale, but for now we will be considering these three movements the "complete" symphony -- and they form a quite satisfying whole to me.) The question is:

Is this happy music?

"Ingratitude is always Loge's lot"

English singing translation by Andrew Porter, used in the Goodall-ENO performance below:

LOGE: Never one word
of praise or thanks!
For your sake alone,
hoping to help
I restlessly roamed
to the ends of the earth
to find a ransom for Freia,
one that the giants would like more.
In vain sought I,
and now I can see
in this whole wide world,
nothing at all
is of greater
worth to a man
than woman's beauty and love!

I asked every one living,
in water, earth, and sky,
one question, sought for the answer
and all whom I met,
I asked them this question:
"What in the world
means more to you
than woman's beauty and love?"
But wherever life was stirring
they laughed at me
when they heard what I asked:
in water, earth, and sky, none
would forego the joys of love.

But one I found then
who scorned the delights of love,
who valued gold more dearly
than woman's grace.
The fair and shining Rhinemaidens
came to me with their tale:
The Nibelung dwarf Alberich
begged for their favors,
but he begged them in vain;
the Rhinegold he tore
in revenge from their rock
and now he holds it
dearer than love,
greater than woman's grace.
For their glittering toy
thus torn from the deep
the maidens are sadly mourning.
Return, Wotan,
in anguish, you, for
they ask that you will avenge them;
the gold they pray
that you will restore it,
to shine in the waters forever.

So I promised I'd tell you the story,
and that's what Loge has done.

[in English] Emile Belcourt (t), Loge; English National Opera Orchestra, Reginald Goodall, cond. EMI-Chandos, recorded live, March 1975

Gerhard Stolze (t), Loge; Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded December 1967

Ramón Vinay (t), Loge; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Fritz Stiedry, cond. Live performance, Jan. 26, 1957

by Ken

As I explained Friday night, we're headed toward some serious Bruckner, for which we need to make the acquaintance of music's superscout, the demigod Loge, god of fire and of lies. Friday night we encountered him transformed back into his original state, as fire -- specifically, the Magic Fire with which Wotan surrounds the cherished daughter he is abandoning, Brünnhilde.

We backtrack now to Das Rheingold, and in a moment we're going to meet Loge at his first appearance, fresh from a scouting mission for the head god, Wotan. Now it sounds as if Loge is merely performing an errand for Wotan, looking for a way out of his bind -- having promised his wife's sister, Freia, as payment to the giants Fasolt and Fafner for their heroic efforts in building Wotan's great castle, Valhalla. But Loge is no errand demigod. As he has already pointed out to Wotan (as we're going to hear in a moment, sticking to Andrew Porter's singing translation:

I roam through the whole
wide world as I please!
I'm not held
by house or home.

And for me there's an unmistakable "travelogue" quality to Loge's great narrative, which we've just heard in character-tenorish performances by Peter Schreier and Emile Belcourt, a rather more dramatic one by Gerhard Stolze, and a full-fledged Heldentenor's richly sung rendering (admittedly a distinctly baritonish-sounding) from Ramón Vinay.


MOVING BACK TO LOGE'S ARRIVAL . . .