Guild continues its
Immortal Performances series from the
Met with this non-subscription benefit
Tristan from 13th March 1940.
This has done the rounds before, notably
on Music and Arts, but as so often in
this series Guild has acquired different
source material – in this case a different
set of the transcription. I’ve not heard
the rival set but Guild notes that it
contained line leakage, whereas Guild’s,
in the main, does not. I’m not sure
if the very rough start to the Prelude
in Guild’s copy and subsequent intermittent
but very audible scratches are exactly
mirrored in Music and Arts’ transfer.
In musical terms the principal difference
is that once again Guild has exercised
its droit de seigneur and excised the
singing of Emmanuel List and substituted
the performance of Alexander Kipnis,
which he gave from the Met, the following
year, in February 1941. This fulfils
the Guild rubric of the Opera House
of Our Dreams, prominently
printed under the cast list on the CD
cover, if not necessarily the Opera
House of Our Reality. The prospective
purchaser, as ever, should note the
substitution.
The exalted level of
the cast’s performance has been well
enough examined over the years. Flagstad
is on sumptuous form, her voice resplendent,
full across the range, triumphantly
ringing and taking her intervals with
fearless technical adroitness. In the
performance from which Kipnis’s Marke
is extracted (from the following year)
she was in tired voice and sometimes
struggled with the intervals and sounded
unaccustomedly frayed. Here all is triumphantly
well. Melchior gives us his unmatched
impersonation, bleached, blackened,
and crazed, a performance of telling
wholeness supported by incandescent
vocal reserves. He doesn’t stint the
love music either, and sustains a true
legato with stupendous breath control.
Thorborg is one of the most consistently
underrated of artists and even though
her status has been acknowledged it
seems to me that such a Brangäne
comes seldom in a generation. She characterises
with absolute devotion; there’s not
a moment when one can separate consummate
professionalism from declamatory theatrical
impersonation. Huehn’s baritone has
now achieved an ease of production that
was, if anything, even freer and more
fresh the following year – but here
it’s fine enough as it is – managing
to be both warm and equalised across
the scale. Kipnis is indeed (from 1941)
in excellent and admonitory form, the
golden voice subsumed to the dictates
of the drama in his Monologue and sending
out tidal waves of moral gravity. Anthony
Marlowe has a bit of a bleat in his
voice in his small role but it’s of
very little account – he sings musically.
Presiding über alles is Erich Leinsdorf,
fiery, fast, lithe, dramatic, sometimes
unreflective, youthful, and ardent.
He gives full rein to the impetuous
ardency and drama of the score – with
the Met Orchestra on fine form – but
does tend to elide the more philosophical
depths.
The vocal excellence
of the cast survives in the acetates
with great clarity and immediacy. The
ancillary scratches and ticks are another
matter. Act I suffers the worst in this
respect with constant scratches and
buzzing in Thorborg’s Weh! Ach
Weh! and what sound to me like
pitch drops in Huehn’s Herrn Tristan.
Act II is much better, though there’s
a little shatter in the Orchestral Introduction
and some scuffing in Melchior’s O
König. Act III also
suffers some scratches and maybe some
distortion in the Prelude. Still, persevere
and there will be great rewards. The
booklet is full with Act synopses and
essays on the cast and the cast history.
Jonathan Woolf
NOTE: Readers may also
like to note that this set also includes
original broadcast commentary and extensive
ovations as well as some very rare pictorials
in the booklet text.
Chorus and Orchestra of the Metropolitan
Opera/Erich Leinsdorf