Stina-Britta Melander,
born in 1924, has been blessed with an unusually long career,
especially for a high lyrical soprano. To readers in the English-speaking
world she may not be a household name, but older opera lovers
in Germany and Austria will surely remember her. It was there
that in large part she achieved her greatest triumphs 1958–1973.
She recalls in her personal and charming liner-notes that
when she made her German debut as Violetta in La traviata
in Wiesbaden she had 52(!) curtain calls. This period is well
documented on an earlier double CD, released a couple of years
ago by Talking Music (TALKCD1030), which draws on material
from a couple of complete CD operas, radio recordings and
live performances where we hear her in company with singers
like Rudolf Schock and Fritz Wunderlich.
The present well-filled
set casts its net wider and roughly covers her activities
in Sweden. Its starting point is her first test record for
His Master’s Voice back in 1938 where, with a voice that of
course has no operatic dimensions but has a lightness and
freshness that she preserved all through her career, the 14-year-old
girl asks “Varför skall man tvinga mig att sjunga?” (“Why
are they forcing me to sing?”). With hindsight it seems a
superfluous question; she takes as naturally to singing as
a horse to water - strange metaphor, but having grown up on
a little farm in central Sweden, I know horses’ capacity to
consume water whenever they get an opportunity. This early
she had already that fast vibrato, the easy high notes and
an aptness for coloratura that were always her hallmarks,
although still in embryo. Since the programme is presented
strictly chronologically, it is easy to follow her development.
Four years later,
singing “14 år tror jag visst att jag var” (”14 years I believe
I was”) on a commercial 78 rpm record, the voice is more evenly
produced and the coloratura is spot-on. The song, by the way,
was once made famous by 19th century Swedish diva
Christina Nilsson. Illusion, a fairly vapid “schlager”
the term in general use for a popular song, to my surprise
turned out to have been one of the most frequently played
records in 1944, according to Swedish Radio, staying for 17
weeks at the top of the list of best-sellers.
The live recording
from the Stockholm Opera of Un ballo in maschera from
her debut year 1946, shows her as the page Oscar (or Otto)
as a fully-fledged young coloratura soprano, lively, agile
with absolutely clean runs. After a pert Papagena, in duet
with the sonorous Hugo Hasslo there is a leap of seven years
that brings us to the mature artist, singing the Queen of
the Night’s two hilarious arias, for once in Icelandic, which
really doesn’t matter, since the text is ruminative anyway
up in those stratospheric regions, whatever language is used.
Some suspect intonation apart, these are good renditions of
both arias, the second being quite forceful, as befits the
evil woman.
The sound quality
is variable on these early recordings. But the operetta sides,
made I suppose for Swedish Radio, show a marked improvement.
That is a definitive asset for the French duets with the charming
Gösta Kjellertz, conducted by Albert Wolff, no less.
A high spot is
the aria from Don Pasquale, recorded in 1959 and sung
in Italian where her Norina is witty and alluring – and her
trill is excellent! Even better is her Violetta, sung in German
in a 1960 recording. She has that tone of vulnerability that
makes one feel pity for her from the outset. The slightly
fluttery tone and deep involvement recalls my first LP - Violetta,
Elena Todeschi on Concert Hall; a recording that was the trigger
for my interest in opera in the early 1960s. In between these
two arias we hear a central scene from Orphée aux Enfèrs,
where she is partnered by the excellent character tenor Sven
Erik Vikström, who on stage also was able to play Orphée’s
violin solo.
The final tracks
of CD 1 present two Swedish opera rarities. Franz Berwald
nurtured an unrequited love for opera. The operetta Jag
går i kloster (I go to a nunnery), completed in October
1842, was staged in Stockholm and ran for six performances
with that other legendary soprano, Jenny Lind. It is pretty
music, with folksy atmosphere, which would be interesting
to hear revived some day. Britta-Stina Melander sings it simply
and beautifully and in the duet “Låt mig vara ifred” (“Let
me be alone”) we also hear bass-baritone Erik Saedén, born
the same year as Melander and still singing. As a matter of
fact, as I write this at about 8 p.m. on 20 December 2005
he is singing the part of Geronte in Manon Lescaut at
the Royal Opera in Stockholm. As can be heard on this 44-year-old
excerpt, few can challenge him when it comes to articulation
of the text. The other work is Hilding Rosenberg’s Lycksalighetens
ö (Isle of Bliss), a big romantic opera, written
and premiered during WW2 and regarded as one of the few really
important Swedish operas. Melander’s singing of Zephyr’s aria
shows that this could also have been an international success.
And it still can. I strongly recommend the complete live recording
from the Norrland Opera, which I reviewed some time ago and
also made one of my Recordings of the Year (see review).
Apart from a lovely
rendering of Mimi’s aria from La bohéme, again sung
in German, CD 2 mainly covers songs with piano and to a great
extent from the last part of her career. After a lively duet
with a William Claussen on top form and two of Canteloube’s
most well-known Chants d’Auvergne in spirited performances
we find her in the period after her German sojourn. Past 50
and nominally past her best in terms of lyrical soprano singing,
it is still difficult to find any signs of deterioration.
There is no widening of vibrato, there is no discernible hardening
of tone, only that hard-to-define feeling that this is a singer
who has been active for quite some time, which has given her
even greater confidence and deeper insight. There is a likeness
to Erna Berger, another light coloratura who retained her
girlish timbre and lightness and became an excellent interpreter
of German Lieder during her Indian Summer in the 1950s.
Exquisitely accompanied by “Sweden’s Gerald Moore”, Jan Eyron,
she moulds the Reger songs in a way that makes one wonder
why they are not heard more often. Du meines Herzens Krönelein
is more readily associated with Richard Strauss, who is here
represented by the equilibristic Amor. Her technically
assured singing made me think that she must have been a perfect
Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos. A quick
check with Stina-Britta revealed that: “Certainly, I sang
it at the ”second premiere” at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin
in the 60s with Silvio Varviso conducting, Lisa Della Casa
and the recently deceased tenor James King. Among coloratura
parts Zerbinetta was my favourite role.” I would certainly
have loved to hear her in Grossmächtige Prinzessin!
Fritz Arlberg
and Isidor Dannström were two important Swedish singers during
the 19th century. The quite simple “folksy” songs
presented here, sung with disarming simplicity – “art concealing
art” – are interesting for being dedicated to the two greatest
Swedish international sopranos during the period, Christina
Nilsson and Sigrid Arnoldsson. The former left no recorded
evidence of her art, although there have always been rumours
about some early cylinders, but obviously they have never
surfaced. The latter (1861 – 1943) made several records when
still in her prime, some of which I have heard. The primitive
sound on recordings made before WW1 was always more devastating
to the female voice than to the male, so it is not easy to
know exactly what she must have sounded like “in the flesh”,
but it seems that Melander, approaching the age of 60, could
still challenge her.
The two Debussy
songs, again with Eyron at the piano, are light and elegant,
and “Hear ye, Israel” from Elijah, rather distantly
recorded in the vast St. Clara Church in central Stockholm
in 1987, rings out impressively.
At the age of
70 she returned to the opera stage for a few performances
of Eugene Onegin in a MusikiDalarna (Music in the province
of Dalecarlia) production. For the first and, to my knowledge,
only time Monsieur Triquet’s part was sung by a soprano, but
not actually as a trouser-role; Melander was instead an utterly
charming Madame Triquet. I saw one of the performances
and enjoyed it greatly. Here was an old stager who knew all
the tricks how to steal the show, both visually and aurally.
I believe that is possible to hear all this on this recording,
even without the experience of having seen her. It is true
that the voice has begun to thin out – but remarkably little.
What is even more remarkable to hear is her “reprise” of 14
år tror jag visst att jag var, recorded at her 80-years-concert
a year ago. It’s a frail voice but it still retains its girlish
timbre and there is very little trace of a widening of the
vibrato – she even has her coloratura in fine fettle.
There is a quite
substantial bonus in the shape of a set of charming French
18th century shepherds’ songs, charmingly performed
in 1959. Having played the CDs straight through one has her
voice of 45 years ago fresh in the memory. Lovely!
The sound is,
as I have already mentioned, variable; quite a number of the
titles on CD 2 are private recordings, but as whole it is
all quite acceptable. The booklet is adorned with photographs
of her stage-roles and a charming colour photo from October
2004 with Dolly: no, it’s not a cloned sheep, it’s a highly
individual and cute dog.
Jussi Björling,
who noticed her stage-nerves at a performance of Faust,
said to her: “Don’t worry, girl, you sing well, just keep
on doing it and you will became a great singer”. Beniamino
Gigli, who heard her as Butterfly in 1954, sent her a letter
where he recommended her to study for a couple of months with
Toti dal Monte: “then you will become an opera singer that
the world will hear about”. Both Björling and Gigli can’t
have been wrong, can they? – and here is evidence aplenty
that they weren’t. For newcomers to Stina-Britta Melander
it may be advisable to buy the earlier double-CD first and
hear her in all her glory at the height of her powers, mainly,
in the 1960s. For a more all-embracing portrait this second
album is also a treasure-trove.
Göran Forsling
Stina-Britta Melander (soprano)
with various accompaniments and co-singers, among them Hugo Hasslo, Gösta
Kjellertz, Lars Ekman, Sven Erik Vikström, Erik Saedén and William Claussen
