February 4, 2002
To: Classical MusicWeb
From: Richard Caniell
Dear Sirs,
I read the site's recent critiques with great interest.
One point you don’t have quite correct is the spelling of my name. I’d
also like to enlarge on your statement:
"where the master were found to be in poor
condition, insertions have been made from other performances, usually
but not always with the same cast and conductor."
Ordinarily, we do not make insertions unless they are
the same singers. No gap is bridged by bringing in a singer different
than the one singer who is featured in the recording. In Nozze,
the same cast was used for the brief insertions (from 1944);
in Parsifal, four words were put in for Flagstad from Flagstad’s
commercial recording; in Boris, HMV did not record Pimen’s Narrative
and no recording existed of Manfrini. In that instance, the act could
be seamlessly completed by bringing in a different Pimen (Moscona) all
of which you characterized quite fairly. This is, however, only one
instance supportive of your language, yet the same preamble was put
before Siegfried, which had no insertion whatsoever. Indeed,
this phrase may not always, does not, apply to our forthcoming releases
of Elektra, Tristan, Salome, Pagliacci, Lohengrin nor to thousands
of broadcasts which we archive here.
For us, if we have a singer in the broadcast, only
lines sung by that singer, drawn from a different broadcast, would be
used to bridge a gap or repair a damaged disc. With Manfrini, no recording
of him exists. However, if HMV had recorded him in Act I (Monastery
Scene), I could not and would not have substituted Moscona to complete
Act IV. The gap would have remained.
This has not been the case with commercial recordings.
Substitutions, replacements go on in recordings but no information is
given to Grandi public. For instance, an anonymous soprano sang the
final notes for Maguerita Grandi in the MacBeth Sleepwalking
Scene conducted by Beecham issued by HMV/EMI. We learned years later
that Schwarzkopf did the same for Flagstad in the Furtwängler Tristan.
RCA and the Met put out the 1941 Tristan broadcast in their Historic
Series but many portions came from 1940. We did the same kind of thing
with Nozze, the difference is that we said so in the booklet.
In the final part of the 1937 Covent Garden Tristan (Beecham),
Kurvenal and Brangäne are sung by different singers. In the finale
to Act II of the 78 rpm set of Die Walküre, Ella Flesch
and Alfred Jerger replace Marta Fuchs and Hans Hotter, in a set that
offers three conductors.
In every instance cited (and there are many more I
could list) there was a substantial reason to do what was done. And
while our policy is to set forth the facts in our accompanying booklet,
in some of the instances cited, the interpolations (Grandi, Flagstad)
were kept secret because that was the only way to induce the singer
to make the recording when she felt she didn’t have the climactic notes.
How can we argue with that? We lose a few moments of fidelity to the
voice in order to have the much larger essayal.
In some rare instances certain broadcasts have such
shocking, truncations and substantive gaps (as in the Ballo with
Björling and Rethberg), that we departed our policy in this exception
and pieced in certain orchestral phrases and some words which were sung
by a similarly voiced soprano in order to make our restoration available
to our music society members. In that instance, our fidelity was to
the composer in the musical and dramatic continuity required to make
the listening experience possible. The question there was — did it play
as one seamless experience? Whether we would publish this beyond its
availability to Music Society members is a question we are now discussing
because what was recorded of the broadcast offers such memorable singing.
As you saw we gave the facts in our booklet as to interpolation
(same cast) for Nozze and the interpolation of Moscona in the
complete essayal of Pimen’s music in Act IV of Boris, finally
bringing to the public an opportunity to hear the complete fourth act
in dramatic and musical continuity. For us this heightened the effect
of Chaliapin’s art. Keith Hardwick had issued the Chaliapin portions
of Act IV for EMI but when he heard Act IV in complete continuity, he
was delighted. (He did not supply Moscona to us as one critic surmised.)
And so we went ahead.
There are some times when a conflation of sources make
a performance hearable which would otherwise never reach the public.
If the information about it is given in the booklet, we think we’ve
met our obligation. There are those who want a broadcast just as
it was transmitted. Hence, they prefer the 1936 Die Walküre
Act II broadcast Schorr, Flagstad, Melchior, Lehmann / Reiner with the
truncated conclusion in which Marcia Davenport interrupts the performance
as Wotan begins his words to Hunding. She says, "The curtain is
falling," etc. when we know it isn’t and can hear Wotan behind
her. We think the broadcast policy which required the truncation of
the broadcast because some forgettable game show was scheduled to go
on is unacceptable (and it happened to the San Francisco broadcast of
the 1939 Manon, 1939 Walküre, 1940 Nozze and
others). We completed these broadcasts (with the same singers)
because we believed fidelity to the actual performance, the composer,
the singers, the music, drama and text was far more important than fidelity
to idiotic broadcast policies that should have delayed the start of
the subsequent program for 5 to 10 minutes in deference to a listening
audience that has been involved in the opera broadcast for the previous
hour. I would not want to honor this objectionable broadcast policy
66 years later because "that’s what was transmitted."
In short, a variety of premises and motives abound
connected with this subject in which reasonable people may disagree.
We don’t proffer our premise or policy as the only way to approach this
subject. (We have never brought in a soprano to sing the high notes
for a soprano who couldn’t sing them.) Every note sung by the named
singer is sung by him or her without improvement; that is the core of
the historical record we, here, insist be served. We do believe in interweaving
broadcast sources with the same singers if that makes a broadcast complete
that would not be otherwise.
Although I say we ordinarily do not bring in
other singers to cover a gap, in extraordinary circumstances we have
done so. For instance, in the 1937 Rheingold, Bodanzky broke
the opera into two acts ending "Act I" just before the music
begins for the transformation of the scene into Neibelugen. In doing
this he cut some music. Unfortunately, the final disc of the end of
Bodanzky’s Act I was lost back in the 1930s, along with the beginning
portion of the curtain calls. Only the disc with the ending curtain
calls (with the commentator describing the singer’s appearance) existed.
So I had to bring in a different soprano for Fricka’s one line and male
voices for Donner’s three words and Froh’s four words. My reconstruction
meant to return to Wagner’s seamless transitions into the various motifs
that accompany Wotan and Loge as they climb down into Nibelheim, serving
the musical-dramatic continuity.
This remake has had wide spread distribution through
Music Society members going back into the 1980s and has appeared on
every tape I’ve since come across traded by collectors. In addition,
it is in the Naxos issue of our first restoration. I don’t like my work
in it because of the state of the source and it has been redone from
the alternate transcription so as to be seamless in the re-mastered
dream Rheingold. In addition, the nature of the defects in the
first transcription transfer used for Naxos required me to interpolate
two minutes and 15 seconds of the transition-to-Niebelheim music, in
part, what Bodanzky omitted. The re-mastering for Guild replaces only
50 seconds.
This interpolation was a necessary license because
the break off was disastrous to the drama and musically truncative.
However, even if I had the discs with the Bodanzky break musically complete
and the intermission curtains bows unbroken, I still wouldn’t have issued
it because the commentator and curtain callas mid-opera are an intrusion
into a Wagnerian world which the composer specifically meant to sustain.
In this instance, one of the very few in our 22 year history, I did
have to bring in different anonymous singers for those three short lines
and a short part of the orchestral bridge not conducted by Bodanzky.
But no one that I’ve ever met who has heard the original, prefers it.
We do not seek to argue with your excellent critiques
(or indeed with any critics affirmative or negative views). Rather this
lengthy letter seeks to open up the subject to include not only the
many performances Guild may issue to which the quoted line does not
apply but to the rare occasions when your language does apply and the
specific premises which characterize those few instances. Specifically,
I mean to make clear that the caveat you state does not apply to Siegfried
(nor will it do so to most of the proposed releases planned over the
next few years. Indeed, had the paragraph to which I refer not been
repeated from Nozze / Boris, I would have had the added pleasure
of your further comments about the singers, major and minor, the booklet
texts or other aspects upon which you might have enlarged
In any event, I am greatly enjoying the evident knowledge,
sensitivity and responsiveness of your critiques and do thank you for
your interest.
Sincerely,
