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Great Swedish Singers - Ragnar Ulfung(tenor) Jacques OFFENBACH (1819–1880) Les Contes d’Hoffmann (1881)
1. Il était une fois (The legend of Kleinzach) [5:09]
2. Malheureux, tu ne comprends (Hoffmann-Giulietta
a.3) [6:52] Jules MASSENET (1842–1912) Manon (1884)
3. En fermant les yeux (Des Grieux’s dream) [3:28] Georges BIZET (1838–1875) Carmen (1875)
4. La fleur que tu m’avais jetée (Don José’s flower
song) [3:35] Bedrich SMETANA (1824–1884) The Bartered Bride (1866)
5. I know a girl who burns for you (Kecal–Jenik, a.2) [2:11]
6. How can I believe (Jenik, a.2) [3:28]
7. Go away! You have deceived me (Jenik–Mařenka, a.3)
[4:07] Modest MUSSORGSKY (1839–1881) Boris Godunov (1874)
8. O, the same dream (Grigory and Friar Pimen at the Chudov
monastery, a.1) [11:49] Giacomo PUCCINI (1858–1924) Tosca (1900)
9. E lucevan le stelle [3:00]
10. O dolci mani (Cavaradossi–Tosca a.3) [7:32] La Bohème (1896)
11. Che gelida manina [4:29] Giuseppe VERDI (1813–1901) Un ballo in maschera (1859)
12. Di’ tu se fedele (a.1) [3:07]
13. Forse la soglia … Ma se m’è forza (a.3) [7:03]
14. Ah! Perchè qui! fuggite (a.3) [5:47]
15. Ella è pura (a.3) [4:49]
Ragnar Ulfung
(tenor, all); Margareta Hallin (soprano) (2); Paul Höglund
(bass) (5); Evy Tibell (soprano) (7); Bengt Rundgren (bass)
(8); Birgit Nilsson (soprano) (10); Aase
Nordmo-Løvberg
(soprano), Birgit Nordin (soprano), Hugo Hasslo (baritone),
Bo Lundberg (bass), Arne Tyrén (bass) (13-15)
Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra/Silvio Varviso (4, 9); Stora
Teatern Orchestra, Gothenburg/Styrbjörn Lindedal (5-7); Royal
Orchestra (and Chorus), Stockholm/Herbert Sandberg (1-3,
11), Bohumil Gregor (8), Fausto Cleva (10), Sixten Ehrling
(12-15)
rec. at the Concert Hall, Gothenburg 5-6 May, 1958 (5-7),
at the Royal Opera House 3 October, 1958 (3, 11), 13 January
1959 (12-15), 28 February 1960 (1, 2), 28 September 1964
(10), 22 April 1966 (8), unknown venue 2 November 1968 (4,
9) BLUEBELL
ABCD101 [77:53]
Ragnar Ulfung was born in Oslo in 1927 and made his stage debut
there in 1952 in Menotti’s The Consul. After a sojourn
in Bergen he came to Gothenburg where he stayed until 1958.
From then on he was a member of the Royal Opera in Stockholm,
where he became one of the most important singers in an ensemble
built around a number of great names. From the 1950s and
through their remarkable longevity they eventually came to
be known as “The Iron Gang”. Ragnar Ulfung’s career lasted
longer than most; in fact it hasn’t ended yet. In the autumn
of 2003 I saw him at the premiere of The Bartered Bride in
the character role of Circus Master, where he sang and acted
with undiminished gusto and expressiveness. Expressive is
indeed the keyword for Ragnar Ulfung: the acting is at least
as important as the singing, which doesn’t automatically
mean that singing is secondary. The present disc is ample
proof of the opposite, but all through his career he was
a character tenor with a voice. The recordings on this disc
are from the early part of his career and reveal a mainly
lyrical voice, well equalized, with a smooth legato and a
seamless changeover from chest voice to head voice. His timbre
is very characteristic and even though the voice at this
stage isn’t as brilliant as some of his colleagues it is
strong enough to carry through an orchestral tutti at forte
and match even as glorious a voice as Birgit Nilsson’s in
the scene from Tosca (tr. 10). Later his voice grew
considerably and in 1983 he even took on Otello in
a production where he was also the stage director. I vividly
remember his penetrating portrait of the doomed moor.
Much later than that, when he was well past seventy, I heard him singing
in concert a thrilling Vesti la giubba from Pagliacci with
heft, ring and steadiness that tenors half his age would
have envied. Besides his activities in Stockholm he had an
important international career, in later years primarily
as a character singer, visiting Vienna, Paris, La Scala Milan,
Covent Garden and NY Met among other great houses, and also
as director. He was sadly under-recorded but to an international
public he will probably be best remembered for his chillingly
oily Monostatos in Ingmar Bergman’s famous film version of Die
Zauberflöte.
All the recordings on this disc are from broadcasts by Swedish
Radio. As so often with the issues in this invaluable Bluebell
series “Great
Swedish Singers”, we get incidental glimpses – often more
than that – of his colleagues. Most of the scenes are sung
in Swedish, which is very little of a drawback in most cases.
He is an ardent and expressive Hoffmann in the two excerpts
from Offenbach’s opera where we also hear Margareta as a
superb Giulietta. The Dream Song from Manon is initially
a bit unsteady but also shows his admirable legato and beautifully
shaded pianissimos. In the Flower Song from Carmen he
is occasionally slightly flat, a defect that became more
pronounced in later years, but this is still a worthy impersonation
of the ill-fated corporal: intense and lyrically glowing.
Three excerpts from The Bartered Bride, recorded in
Gothenburg forty-five years before the Stockholm production
I mentioned
above. Here he is Jenik, as youthful and impassioned as any
competitor: he can without indulgence be mentioned in the
same breath as Wunderlich or Dvorsky, my favourites in the
role. We also hear bass-baritone Paul Höglund, more sonorous
and impressive than I ever heard him live. Evy Tibell is
a fine Mařenka. He is likewise an expressive Grigory
in the long scene from act 1 of Boris Godunov, where
Bengt Rundgren is an impressive Pimen, warm and sonorous.
I could have wagered a fiver that it was Kim Borg, so similar
of timbre are they – and that is high praise indeed.
The Flower Song is sung in the original French and Cavaradossi’s È lucevan
le stelle, recorded at the same concert, is in Italian.
It is a lyrical reading as it should be, but there is no
lack of heft and glow. The scene with Birgit Nilsson from
a little later in the last act, actually starts a bit before
Cavaradossi’s impassioned outburst O dolci mani,
which has all the required schmalz and Ms Nilsson
in one of her favourite roles is as regal as ever. Rodolfo’s Che
gelida manina is expressive – for Ulfung the words
were not something written for the sake of vocalizing -
he always searched out the meaning behind them and chiselled
the character accordingly. This is very obvious in the
concluding numbers, which find him in his most famous part,
as Gustavus III in Un ballo in maschera.
In 1959,
one hundred years after the premiere of Verdi’s opera,
the Royal Opera mounted a new production of the work, where
the action was transported back to where Verdi originally
intended: to Stockholm and the reign of King Gustavus.
For this purpose poet Erik Lindegren was commissioned to
make a new translation or, as it turned out, a partly new
version, where he also tried to find a language that was ‘period’.
He even quoted famous lines from the poet laureate Kjellgren.
Göran Gentele was the stage director and the dynamic Sixten
Ehrling conducted. It was a tremendous success, running
for twenty years in 218 performances, most of them with
Ulfung as Gustavus. It was also recorded by Swedish Television
and has been shown a number of times. If I remember correctly
that was a studio production but with practically the same
cast as here, bar Holberg (Renato in the Italian Boston-located ‘original’)
who was sung by Erik Saedén on TV while veteran Verdian
Hugo Hasslo is briefly heard here.
The recording can only
give a pale impression of Ulfung’s superb reading, since
so much depended on the visual element. His way of walking,
his feminine gestures and coquettish bearing in a way demolished
the icon that the King had been; some people were honestly
shocked. Ulfung’s light Norwegian accent also gave Gustavus
a slightly foreign image – the ‘real’ Gustavus was Francophile.
What we hear, though, is a bold, energetic and self-confident
King, disguised as a Sailor in the first act Barcarole.
The big third act aria - Gustavus’ monologue before the
masked ball – is sung with a myriad nuances. The final
scene is probably the most moving account I have heard – but
I can’t set myself free from my remembrances of seeing
it on TV. The cover picture above shows Ulfung in this,
the role of his life.
All in all this disc is another priceless cultural achievement from
Bluebell, at long last giving Ragnar Ulfung his rightful
place in Swedish recorded opera history.
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