# Wagner singers..................



## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Who are your favorite Wagner singers for the various Wagner roles?
Name as many roles and singer as you like?
:tiphat:


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

For most roles, in most operas, I don't have clear-cut favorites. In Wagner, the problem is very often that the combined vocal and dramatic demands on the singer are so great that no one can fully meet them, and so I end up saying, "Well, this one does this better but the other one does that better." There's also the fact that many of the greatest Wagner singers lived too early to make complete recordings, so we must rely on excerpts and fill in the blanks with our imaginations.

Taking these factors into consideration, I'll just start with _Tristan_ and say that the pair of singers I'd like most to have heard as the lovers are Lauritz Melchior and Frida Leider in the 1920s and 30s. Their recording of the love duet, cut and a bit rushed though it is, remains uniquely incandescent. The freedom, vibrancy, flexibility and warmth of Leider's voice in her prime, combined with what was reported to be fine acting ability, might have made her close to the Isolde of my dreams.






Leider was also a superb Brunnhilde, and in these excerpts from _Die Walkure_ she outclasses most of her successors.





 (Note the portamenti and trills, as specified in the score)





 (You have to tolerate some awful sound in this Met performance from 1934, but there's no question about the quality of the singing. Just listen to Leider's superb legato in "War es so schmahlich.")

Kirsten Flagstad arrived at the Met in 1935 and overwhelmed audiences with the power and sumptuousness of her voice. But old-timers continued to say that Leider was the greater Isolde. If either of them turned up today I could die happy.


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## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

Duck is very knowledgeable about the pre 1951 Wagner singers and I defer to him in all these matters, for me the post 1951 era I have some personal favorites:
*
Wotan/Traveler/Gurnemanz - Hans Hotter*
Very expressive vivid vocal characterizations, wide ranging flexible vocal technique, the Hotter/Varnay combination was a match made in Valhalla for 1950s Bayreuth

*Brunhilde/Ortrud - Astrid Varnay*
During the 1950s so many great performances, I like her vocal sound better than Nilsson, a darker richly expressive lower/mid range that could still launch powerful soaring high notes
*
Kundry - Martha Modl*
This seems to be Modl's sweet spot although she sang all the major Wagner female roles, as the dramatic tension and friction rises Modl just rises to the occasion in spectacular fashion

*Eva - Elisabeth Grummer *
For Meistersinger this is almost a no brainer, the most talented, elegant, sweet voiced Eva I have heard

*Lohengrin, Parsifal - Jess Thomas*
An American tenor that had a glorious run of great Wagner recordings in the early 1960's, commanding lower voice with golden lyric top that sounds so right for these heroes of Montsalvat

*Dutchman - George London/Leonie Rysanek*
My favorite recordings of Flying Dutchman has this pair, capture the dark mysterious mood very well

*Alberich, Klingsor - Gustav Neidlinger
*When the role calls for a dark voice with sinister bad intentions that is still flexible and vividly expressive Neidlinger just excels at this

I have not decided on a Siegfried, Sachs/Walther, Tannhauser or Tristan/Isolde will have to ponder this further


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

DarkAngel said:


> Duck is very knowledgeable about the pre 1951 Wagner singers and I defer to him in all these matters, for me the post 1951 era I have some personal favorites:
> *
> Wotan/Traveler/Gurnemanz - Hans Hotter*
> Very expressive vivid vocal characterizations, wide ranging flexible vocal technique, the Hotter/Varnay combination was a match made in Valhalla for 1950s Bayreuth
> ...


Great choices, DA. Among postwar singers found on complete recordings, we'd have few differences. If you haven't heard Hermann Uhde's Klingsor, he brings a manic, unhinged quality to it which just slightly edges out Neidlinger for me, but Neidlinger runs him a close second and also remains _the_ Alberich on records, beside whom I find everyone else a major letdown. He was born to be a Nibelung!

I too find Grummer infinitely lovable on the old Kempe _Meistersinger,_ the only recording of the opera I owned until recently. In _Parsifal_, Hotter is the noblest, most eloquent of Gurnemanzes, even past his prime, and Thomas perhaps the best Parsifal, at least vocally, on a modern recording (except maybe Vickers; matter of taste).

We do differ over the dramatic sopranos. Varnay has a very heavy, dark, mezzoish quality that some love, but which to me seems more suitable for villains like Ortrud and psychotics like Klytemnestra than exuberant young valkyries, and Modl's vocal production is strange and "chesty" and hard for me to listen to except when she's expressing emotional duress, which is seemingly most of the time! I find mezzo Irene Dalis more seductive among the Bayreuth Kundrys. To my ear neither of these ladies can match the free, soaring vocalism of Leider, Flagstad, Traubel, or Nilsson. But of course they're both fine actresses.

Just my two cents. :tiphat:


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

A little story told by Jess Thomas.

Back in his first year at Bayreuth ('61, I think) he was taking time out, sitting at a cafe table, and an elderly woman walked over to him and asked, "Mr. Thomas, where in Italy did you study?" He replied that he had studied only in America. "You sing Wagner the right way, the Italian way," she said, and then introduced herself as Frida Leider.

Leider, born in 1888, was the great German Wagnerian soprano of the interwar period, a time when Italy was still producing an abundance of great singers and Italian training was still based in the old bel canto tradition. That kind of technique - characterized by a free emission of tone, a firm legato, and clear diction, and capable of such graces as trills - is clearly heard in her own singing, as the Wagner excerpts I posted above illustrate. Dramatic sopranos in the early 20th century, such as Lilli Lehmann, Johanna Gadski, and Lillian Nordica, possessed these technical refinements which are largely absent from the singers we hear even back in the 1950s, never mind today. I find Thomas's story quite touching.


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## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

Woodduck said:


> *A little story told by Jess Thomas*.
> 
> Back in his first year at Bayreuth ('61, I think) he was taking time out, sitting at a cafe table, and an elderly woman walked over to him and asked, "Mr. Thomas, where in Italy did you study?" He replied that he had studied only in America. "You sing Wagner the right way, the Italian way," she said, and then introduced herself as *Frida Leider*.
> 
> Leider, born in 1888, was the great German Wagnerian soprano of the interwar period, a time when Italy was still producing an abundance of great singers and Italian training was still based in the old bel canto tradition. That kind of technique - characterized by a free emission of tone, a firm legato, and clear diction, and capable of such graces as trills - is clearly heard in her own singing, as the Wagner excerpts I posted above illustrate. Dramatic sopranos in the early 20th century, such as Lilli Lehmann, Johanna Gadski, and Lillian Nordica, possessed these technical refinements which are largely absent from the singers we hear even back in the 1950s, never mind today. I find Thomas's story quite touching.


Love those personal side stories, great feeling to be complimented by one of the previous generation greats (and knowing all the great wagner male singers she worked with)


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Favourites:

Dutchman: Theo Adam (But I haven't heard George London)

Senta: Cheryl Studer

Lohengrin: Jonas Kaufmann (Siegfried Jerusalem is a close second)

Elsa: Cheryl Studer (Grummer a close second)

Ortrud: Waltraud Meier (Ludwig possible joint favourite)

Tahnhaueser (Domingo? Haven't heard any of the 'greats'* in the role)

Elisabeth: Cheryl Studer

Venus: Waltraud Meier

Wotan: John Tomlinson/Hans Hotter (in the early 50s)

Brunhilde: Martha Modl

Siegfried: Siegfried Jerusalem

Erda: Maria von Ilosvay

Fricka: Waltraud Meier

Sieglinde: Cheryl Studer

Alberich: Gustav Neidlinger

Eva: (Do I have to choose? Cheryl Studer and Gundula Janowitz)

Walther: Ben Heppner

Sachs: Thomas Stewart

Tristan: Siegfried Jerusalem

Isolde: Waltraud Meier

Parsifal: Siegfried Jerusalem

Kundry: Waltraud Meier


*Of course Domingo is a great, but not normally considered one of the Wagner greats.

I guess I've just outed myself as a Studer/Meier/Jerusalem fan!

N.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

This man might have become the greatest Wotan of the postwar period:






Here is his story.

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/james-milligan-emc/


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

Kirsten Flagstad, Loritz Melchior, Frida Lieder and Hans Hotter. Astrid Varnay too, but in mezzo roles


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I've just heard something today that has made me change my mind.

Several weeks ago I stopped into a local library and found some classical CDs cheap. Among them was a performance, on what seems to be a private label called "The 40s Label," of _Tristan und Isolde,_ recorded at the Met on 2 January, 1937, starring Kirsten Flagstad, Lauritz Melchior, Kerstin Thorborg, Julius Huehn, and Ludwig Hoffmann. This stellar lineup was a typical Met Wagner cast in the '30s, and the conductor was Artur Bodanzky, their Wagner specialist and a conductor more or less forgotten except by collectors of this repertoire recorded at this house.

I have just now gotten around to listening to this, and have just finished act one. My verdict thus far? This is the finest performance of _Tristan_ I have ever heard. Singing and conducting are superb throughout, and Bodanzky turns out to be something of a revelation. But what has made my normally steady jaw drop to the floor is the gloriously sung and brilliantly acted Isolde of Kirsten Flagstad.

Brilliantly acted? This is not the common wisdom about Flagstad; her studio recordings tend to convey the impression of a sensitive and musical but rather placid singer, richly beautiful of tone but lacking in passion. Hearing her Isolde, recorded live and in her absolute prime, simply blows this impression into oblivion. Here she is Wagner's beautiful, fiery princess to the very life: always aristocratic, never exaggerated or vulgar, but constantly alive to the words she sings and subtly inflecting that flood of golden tone, flawlessly produced and guided by the kind of classic legato one rarely or never hears in Wagner today. I am still in shock half an hour after hearing this, not quite believing.

Flagstad came to the Met in 1935, at the age of 40, when the theater's leading Wagnerian soprano for some years had been Frida Leider, whose praises I have sung elsewhere. There were the usual debates over their relative merits (just imagine having two such sopranos to fight about!), but the general feeling was that Leider was the better actress, while Flagstad had the more magnificent instrument. From listening to the recorded evidence, I suspect that this was accurate. I chose Leider as probably my ideal Isolde; but after hearing what I've heard today I'm going to have to say: in the theater, perhaps, but not on recordings.

There are actually quite a few live transcriptions of _Tristan_ with Flagstad and Melchior, and they are obligatory listening for anyone who wants to know what this impossibly demanding opera can sound like, and to know what the composer meant when he told his first interpreters, "There are no recitatives in my music! It's all arias!" How can we not envy the audience of 1937, who could not have known, but may have suspected when they bought a ticket to _Tristan_, that they were going to hear a pair of singers the like of whom Wagner himself could only have dreamed, and over whose recordings future opera lovers could only sigh?

Even in her studio recording of Isolde, made near the end of her career at age 57, Flagstad offers other _hochdramatische_ sopranos an object lesson in how to sing this music. In 1937, in the house and in her magnificent prime, she is in another galaxy from the rest.

What we've been told is true. The legend is reality. Hear and believe.

I say no more.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> I've just heard something today that has made me change my mind.
> 
> Several weeks ago I stopped into a local library and found some classical CDs cheap. Among them was a performance, on what seems to be a private label called "The 40s Label," of _Tristan und isolde,_ recorded at the Met on 2 January, 1937, starring Kirsten Flagstad, Lauritz Melchior, Kerstin Thorborg, Julius Huehn, and Ludwig Hoffmann. This stellar lineup was a typical Met Wagner cast in the '30s, and the conductor was Artur Bodanzky, their Wagner specialist and a conductor more or less forgotten except by collectors of this repertoire recorded at this house.
> 
> ...


So, can we assume you liked it then?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Barbebleu said:


> So, can we assume you liked it then?


Come outside of that dog where you can read, Groucho.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Come outside of that dog where you can read, Groucho.


Consider it done!? BTW it only seems to be available on Amazon.com. I have the 1936 and the 1938 ones. Now I'll have to devote time to hunting this down. Thanks for that Woodduck


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## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

Woodduck said:


> I've just heard something today that has made me change my mind.
> 
> Several weeks ago I stopped into a local library and found some classical CDs cheap. Among them was a performance, on what seems to be a private label called "The 40s Label," of _Tristan und Isolde,_ recorded at the Met on 2 January, 1937, starring Kirsten Flagstad, Lauritz Melchior, Kerstin Thorborg, Julius Huehn, and Ludwig Hoffmann. This stellar lineup was a typical Met Wagner cast in the '30s, and the conductor was Artur Bodanzky, their Wagner specialist and a conductor more or less forgotten except by collectors of this repertoire recorded at this house.
> 
> I have just now gotten around to listening to this, and have just finished act one. My verdict thus far? This is the finest performance of _Tristan_ I have ever heard. Singing and conducting are superb throughout, and Bodanzky turns out to be something of a revelation. But what has made my normally steady jaw drop to the floor is the gloriously sung and brilliantly acted Isolde of Kirsten Flagstad.












Yes Barbie, sometimes it is hard to tell if Duck really likes something...............:lol:

In the sweet MET Wagner boxset (every opera has nice gatefold digipak with performance photos) there is almost a match to the Tristan und Isolde opera Duck mentions, it is Saturday matinee MET 1938 Bodanzky with Flagstad and Melchior (also on Spotify) not sure if they still have the 1937 performance in the MET archives but the 1938 Tristan was chosen to be remastered and put in this boxset


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

There are too many Flagstad/Melchior _Tristans_ for me to keep up with, and I really couldn't say whether this one from 1/2/37 is the best overall. I think they all have the then-standard cuts. Here is the Amazon page for it:

http://www.amazon.com/Wagner-Flagstad-Melchior-Thorborg-Bodanzky/dp/B000EHJN5W

As so often, the accompanying reviews refer to various recordings. Why can't Amazon prevent this chaotic nonsense? But those that refer to the correct recording are glowing, as they should be. My copy, btw, is on a different label ("The 40s Label"), which I don't find available anywhere.

It appears you'll have to shell out $50.00. I paid $1.50.


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## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

Woodduck said:


> There are too many Flagstad/Melchior _Tristans_ for me to keep up with, and I really couldn't say whether this one from 1/2/37 is the best overall. I think they all have the then-standard cuts. Here is the Amazon page for it:
> 
> http://www.amazon.com/Wagner-Flagstad-Melchior-Thorborg-Bodanzky/dp/B000EHJN5W
> 
> ...


Well done sir, it is nice to have a small victory for the home team.........I have still not decided on favorite singers for Tristan but the 1952 Karajan Bayreuth is soooooo goooood


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

DarkAngel said:


> Yes Barbie, sometimes it is hard to tell if Duck really likes something...............:lol:
> 
> In the sweet MET Wagner boxset (every opera has nice gatefold digipak with performance photos) there is almost a match to the Tristan und Isolde opera Duck mentions, it is Saturday matinee MET 1938 Bodanzky with Flagstad and Melchior (also on Spotify) not sure if they still have the 1937 performance in the MET archives but the 1938 Tristan was chosen to be remastered and put in this boxset


Yes DA, that's one of the ones I've got. That Met box is really nice. I picked up Tenor Heroes of Bayreuth last year. This is a nice box too. It has Winifred Wagner talking about Bayreuth but unfortunately it is in German and I cannot understand all of what she is saying. No translation is given in the accompanying booklet either. Does anyone on the forum know if a translation exists?


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

I am not a Wagner fan, but for Meistersinger. I really like Waltraud Meier, but alas it does not appear she is any commercial release of Meistersinger.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Florestan said:


> I am not a Wagner fan, but for Meistersinger. I really like Waltraud Meier, but alas it does not appear she is any commercial release of Meistersinger.


Yes, she has the wrong voice for Eva and is too big a star for a support role like Magdalena. Although if someone offered enough money, who knows?


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Barbebleu said:


> Yes, she has the wrong voice for Eva and is too big a star for a support role like Magdalena. Although if someone offered enough money, who knows?


I have a young Waltraud in a DVD of Martha (Flotow) and she is wonderful there.


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