# Which role is tougher, Siegfried or Tristan?



## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Both are amazingly hard.
What do you think?
:tiphat:


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Tristan, without a doubt :tiphat:


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## howlingfantods (Jul 27, 2015)

Just different. Siegfried, especially young Siegfried, is pretty high tessitura where Tristan is pretty low. So tenors who have lower natural range like Vickers and Vinay stuck to Siegmund, Tristan, Parsifal--this is why it's a little doubtful Kaufmann will ever graduate to a Siegfried role but he may someday do a Tristan.

On the other hand, some tenors who can sing Siegfried like S Jerusalem are less satisfying when singing the more baritonal roles like Tristan and Parsifal. Jerusalem often sounds kind of guttural and growly in his recordings of Parsifal and Tristan.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Siegfried of course has to go through two acts of heavy declaratory singng and then match a soprano who has not sing a note up to then in a rapturous love duet. I am no singer but I can imagine both roles are exceedingly difficult. I often wonder what Wagner was doing writing roles like this which so few can sing properly. Interesting n Parsifal he toned down the tenor role to somethng more manageable. Maybe he realised it himself!


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

Contrary to what Wagnerians would want us to believe, Wagner singers don't have it as difficult as they'd like us to think. The tessitura isn't that great in Wagner's work so it just comes down to endurance. How long and often are the arias? The whole "singing over a large Wagnerian orchestra" thing is just talk. They're hired for their timbre - not power.

Tristan and Siegfried are difficult because they have to sing for ages. Who sings the most? That'd be my choice.

If you want difficult....try Lulu


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Couac Addict said:


> Contrary to what Wagnerians would want us to believe, Wagner singers don't have it as difficult as they'd like us to think. The tessitura isn't that great in Wagner's work so it just comes down to endurance. How long and often are the arias? The whole "singing over a large Wagnerian orchestra" thing is just talk. They're hired for their *timbre - not power.*
> 
> *Tristan and Siegfried are difficult because they have to sing for ages. *Who sings the most? That'd be my choice.


Power if also a factor in both voices as anyone who has heard them will testify. Why so few can actually sing them properly.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Couac Addict said:


> Contrary to what Wagnerians would want us to believe, Wagner singers don't have it as difficult as they'd like us to think. The tessitura isn't that great in Wagner's work so it just comes down to endurance. How long and often are the arias? The whole "singing over a large Wagnerian orchestra" thing is just talk. They're hired for their timbre - not power.
> 
> Tristan and Siegfried are difficult because they have to sing for ages. Who sings the most? That'd be my choice.
> 
> If you want difficult....try Lulu


I don't know what other Wagnerians may want us to believe, but this Wagnerian will say that tessitura is indeed an issue for a Wagner singer, but not in the way you mean it. Wagner's heldentenor parts concentrate their most dramatic passages, and call for maximum power, in a part of the voice where tenors recognize a particular difficulty: the "passaggio," that awkward place in the voice around the notes F and G that tenors must learn to negotiate in getting from the "natural" part of the voice to that place where only tenors go. In Verdi and Puccini, the tessitura is higher and allows the singer to move into the upper register for climactic notes. Putting pressure on that "passage" is dangerous for any singer whose technique is less than rock-solid, and if the technique is not firmly in place the result is likely to be the pushed, wobbly sound we get from so many presumptive "heldentenors" whose careers are compromised and shortened thereby. Beyond this, Wagner asks his tenors for exceptional strength in the middle and lower voice - baritone territory, which explains why so many heldentenors, from Melchior on down, have begun as baritones before finding their top notes. So yes, there is a problem of tessitura, but with Wagner that means something different than facility with high notes.

There is certainly a need for power. Why would you think otherwise? Listen to Siegfried's forging song, to how much sustained heroic tone it requires for its proper effect, and then to what he has to contend with at the end of a long evening when Brunnhilde wakes up and challenges him to a duel. Of course endurance is a problem in this opera, even for a suitable voice, and hardly anyone gets through it without audible fatigue, but the fatigue is not purely a result of the role's length. Tristan, similarly, is asked to pit himself against a full orchestra for some twenty minutes after his entry in the second act, then produce tones of sustained legato loveliness in the duet, only to have to battle the orchestra and Isolde together as the duet reaches its climax, whereupon he gets a rest before the marathon of act three, in whose mounting waves of delirium many a tenor has come to grief. Wagner doesn't constantly pit heavy orchestration against his singers, but where he does so the middle-range sonorousness of his characteristic scoring can be a temptation for a singer to push his voice beyond what's necessary, thinking he needs to do so to be heard, and he must fight that temptation in the interest of vocal self-preservation. (Interesting fact: Wagner himself realized this after hearing _Tristan_ sung, and spoke of thinning some of the orchestration, but he never got around to it.)

The incredibly dramatic role of Tristan brings up the third challenge for the Wagner tenor. In addition to the unusual tessitura and the demand for power, the singer is asked to project the sound and meaning of a text which is filled with exceptional expressive demands. No need to point out the philosophical and psychological complexity of the monologues (compared to most operas) Wagner gives his characters, and act three of _Tristan_ is essentially an extended monologue of lacerating self-analysis performed by Tristan on himself. If Siegfried may demand more sheer endurance, Tristan presents the greater challenge to the tenor in maintaining his voice's technical poise while attempting to express the greatest extremes of emotion of which he is capable. It's a fearful balancing act on the edge of potential disaster which every singer must negotiate in his own way.

A solid vocal technique will enable a singer to get through a long night of singing, and a long career, without significant vocal deterioration. But Wagner, besides requiring an unusual type of voice to begin with, lays traps for any would-be heldentenor whose technique is less than perfect. A wise singer puts off attempting these parts until his voice is fully mature and his technique proven in music less likely to derail it.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> A solid vocal technique will enable a singer to get through a long night of singing, and a long career, without significant vocal deterioration. But Wagner, besides requiring an unusual type of voice to begin with, lays traps for any would-be heldentenor whose technique is less than perfect. A wise singer puts off attempting these parts until his voice is fully mature and his technique proven in music less likely to derail it.


And that is why Melchior who had a rock solid technique in spades could sing Wagner and why Lance Ryan, for example, who has no technique to speak of cannot!


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

Sure, but power is required by all singers to generate the sound. The singer doesn't need power to drown out a large orchestra was my meaning. The acoustics in the pit aren't the same as on stage. We know how loud the singers are and we set up accordingly. Whether it's placement in the pit and/or moving the walls/baffles etc. If you can hear someone flipping pages of a book onstage, the singer is hardly going to be an issue.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Couac Addict said:


> Sure, but power is required by all singers to generate the sound. The singer doesn't need power to drown out a large orchestra was my meaning. The acoustics in the pit aren't the same as on stage. We know how loud the singers are and we set up accordingly. Whether it's placement in the pit and/or moving the walls/baffles etc. If you can hear someone flipping pages of a book onstage, the singer is hardly going to be an issue.


You've got me totally confused. How does the fact that pages can be heard rustling in a quiet theater relate to how well I can hear a singer in relation to an orchestra playing rather loud music? What does it matter that the acoustics of the pit differ from the acoustics of the stage, since the audience hears not two separate acoustics but the combined effect? Who are the "we" who know how loud singers are? What does that mean? Are we measuring singers with a decibel meter and then rearranging the auditorium depending on who's singing that night?

No one is suggesting that singers should drown out an orchestra, merely that they should be able to project tones and words with clarity and force over a certain level of sound. It's a question of balance, just as the relative loudness of instruments in the orchestra must be balanced so that everything is sufficiently audible. Singers' voices come in different sizes; we have "lyric" tenors, "spinto" tenors, "dramatic" tenors, "heldentenors." Are you suggesting that Juan Diego Florez and Natalie Dessay might as well be cast Tristan and Isolde if they could nurse their small, slender voices through to the end, since endurance is what singing Wagner "just comes down to" (according to your initial post)? I'm sure their voices would be at least somewhat audible most of the time, since it wasn't Wagner's intention to drown his singers out, but what would they sound like? Certainly nothing like Melchior and Flagstad. They would sound like two tiny people swamped in a vast soundscape, their words would be largely indecipherable, and the opera would have to be renamed "Romantic Tone Poem in Three Movements with Intermittent Vocal Obbligato."

Size matters.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Alberto Remedios said that act 1 of Siegried is so physically and vocally exhausting that by the end of it, he doesn't feel that he can sing another note. Unfortunately...!!


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

I'll vote Siegfried because of 3 murderous acts.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Itullian said:


> I'll vote Siegfried because of 3 murderous acts.


Let's see... Fafner, Mime, and who else?

Don't tell me he got hungry and ate the woodbird!


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> Let's see... Fafner, Mime, and who else?
> 
> Don't tell me he got hungry and ate the woodbird!


I believe the Woodbird is eaten by a crocodile in Carstorf's idiot Bayreuth Ring.


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## gardibolt (May 22, 2015)

> There is certainly a need for power. Why would you think otherwise? Listen to Siegfried's forging song, to how much sustained heroic tone it requires for its proper effect, and then to what he has to contend with at the end of a long evening when Brunnhilde wakes up and challenges him to a duel.


Not to mention he has to sing the forging song while swinging a hammer in time---and even a lightweight stage hammer gets wearing after a while.


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

DavidA said:


> I believe the Woodbird is eaten by a crocodile in Carstorf's idiot Bayreuth Ring.


...after having had sex on stage with Siegfried. Perhaps a reference to the vulgar definition of the verb _vögeln_, or perhaps I'm giving Castorf too much credit?


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## jflatter (Mar 31, 2010)

For what my unprofessional opinion is worth I would say Tristan as you have to sing more beautiful music than Siegfried. Although I am not criticising the work at all.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

jflatter said:


> For what my unprofessional opinion is worth I would say Tristan as you have to sing more beautiful music than Siegfried. Although I am not criticising the work at all.


You have a point.The second act of _Tristan_ requires the kind of legato and dynamic modulation "heldentenors" do least well. Siegfried has no such long-sustained bel canto demands to meet (although he does have some lovely quieter moments).


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Are we considering which role is tougher to sing, or to cast?

In the latter case, I'd say the two toughest roles are Siegfried and Salome--tremendous vocal demands placed on a performer who, ideally, should look like a fit, attractive teenager.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

amfortas said:


> Are we considering which role is tougher to sing, or to cast?
> 
> In the latter case, I'd say the two toughest roles are Siegfried and Salome--tremendous vocal demands placed on a performer who, ideally, should look like a fit, attractive teenager.


I'd guess the young Set Svanholm had both the voice and the looks. For Salome there are probably more candidates with plausible figures.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> I'd guess the young Set Svanholm had both the voice and the looks. For Salome there are probably more candidates with plausible figures.


Or otherwise.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

amfortas said:


> Or otherwise.


Hehe. Nowadays every other teenager looks like that.

At least they didn't have her strip.


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

I'm willing to entertain that Tristan might be tougher to _sing_, and that Siegfried might be tougher to _cast_ (credibly- I think most of us can suspend disbelief to the point where we can take a middle-aged Tristan in stride, but an elderly, corpulent Siegfried playing the role of deft dragon-slayer asks too much of us, I think). However, there's more to opera performance than singing, and stage motion, and the portions of opera performance that involve those other things are where the Siegfried challenge looms largest.

Tristan and Siegfried are both, obviously, protagonists. And like virtually all protagonists, they're at their best when they engage our sympathies. And (to finish the point) it's tougher- a lot tougher- to play Siegfried in a sympathetic manner than it is to play Tristan in such a way. It can be done- I'd argue that it SHOULD be done- but getting the psychology of Siegfried right, on the stage, and in accordance with its creator's intentions is a big, big challenge. I think I've heard one nationally (if not internationally) known tenor muse "you're killing your voice for three hours, and sometimes you just ask yourself- 'for what?!'"

That, briefly, is the challenge of Siegfried.


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

amfortas said:


> Or otherwise.


What a great Salome she was, though.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Reichstag aus LICHT said:


> What a great Salome she was, though.


But her legacy in this role is better served, I think, in audio rather than video records.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Reichstag aus LICHT said:


> ...after having had sex on stage with Siegfried. Perhaps a reference to the vulgar definition of the verb _vögeln_, or perhaps I'm giving Castorf too much credit?


He's not that intelligent, is he?


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

amfortas said:


> But her legacy in this role is better served, I think, in audio rather than video records.


I daresay - and I've seen one or two great Isoldes about whom the same could be said. On one of these occasions a rather ungallant audience member, after Tristan's cry of "Das Schiff! Siehst du's noch nicht?", quipped "That's not a ship you can see, mate, it's Isolde".


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Reichstag aus LICHT said:


> I daresay - and I've seen one or two great Isoldes about whom the same could be said. On one of these occasions a rather ungallant audience member, after Tristan's cry of "Das Schiff! Siehst du's noch nicht?", quipped "That's not a ship you can see, mate, it's Isolde".


Sounds like poor Jane Eaglen. She and Ben Heppner (Tristan) were so massive they couldn't embrace properly. Ships passing in der Nacht.


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

Woodduck said:


> Sounds like poor Jane Eaglen.


Elizabeth Connell, actually, God rest her soul. A fine singer.


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## jflatter (Mar 31, 2010)

Chi_townPhilly said:


> I'm willing to entertain that Tristan might be tougher to _sing_, and that Siegfried might be tougher to _cast_ (credibly- I think most of us can suspend disbelief to the point where we can take a middle-aged Tristan in stride, but an elderly, corpulent Siegfried playing the role of deft dragon-slayer asks too much of us, I think). However, there's more to opera performance than singing, and stage motion, and the portions of opera performance that involve those other things are where the Siegfried challenge looms largest.
> 
> Tristan and Siegfried are both, obviously, protagonists. And like virtually all protagonists, they're at their best when they engage our sympathies. And (to finish the point) it's tougher- a lot tougher- to play Siegfried in a sympathetic manner than it is to play Tristan in such a way. It can be done- I'd argue that it SHOULD be done- but getting the psychology of Siegfried right, on the stage, and in accordance with its creator's intentions is a big, big challenge. I think I've heard one nationally (if not internationally) known tenor muse "you're killing your voice for three hours, and sometimes you just ask yourself- 'for what?!'"
> 
> That, briefly, is the challenge of Siegfried.


A very well thought out post. I recall first getting to know Siegfried by seeing 'Siegfried' live and thought to myself that he needs a good kick up the backside so initially I found it hard to warm to him. Tristan on the other hand is of course the doomed romantic hero.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

jflatter said:


> A very well thought out post. I recall first getting to know Siegfried by seeing 'Siegfried' live and thought to myself that he needs a good kick up the backside so initially I found it hard to warm to him. Tristan on the other hand is of course the doomed romantic hero.


Must say I cannot warm to either character. They are just not human.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

DavidA said:


> Must say I cannot warm to either character. They are just not human.


Well, if you'd been raised in a cave by a nasty dwarf who won't even tell you you had a mother until he's forced to, and who only cares for you so that he can eventually kill you for a magic ring, you might turn out just like Siegfried. Give the kid a break! I mean, he talks to birds. That's pretty sweet, huh?


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> Well, if you'd been raised in a cave by a nasty dwarf who won't even tell you you had a mother until he's forced to, and who only cares for you so that he can eventually kill you for a magic ring, you might turn out just like Siegfried. Give the kid a break! I mean, he talks to birds. That's pretty sweet, huh?


He talks to birds then kills an unarmed dwarf - pretty sweet. You might feel sorry for him having been raised in such a dysfunctional way but you can't warm to him.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

DavidA said:


> He talks to birds then kills an unarmed dwarf - pretty sweet. You might feel sorry for him having been raised in such a dysfunctional way but you can't warm to him.


At least he didn't take up dwarf-tossing.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

KenOC said:


> At least he didn't take up dwarf-tossing.


:lol::lol::lol: ..................


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

DavidA said:


> He talks to birds then kills an unarmed dwarf - pretty sweet. You might feel sorry for him having been raised in such a dysfunctional way but you can't warm to him.


But the dwarf is nasty and wants to kill him.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

I voted for Siegfried to make the result more even.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Sloe said:


> I voted for Siegfried to make the result more even.


You just now voted? Didn't they tell you? The election is over. The big dumb blond brute won. All Nibelungs in Fafner's Forest illegally will now be rounded up and deported.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> You just now voted? Didn't they tell you? The election is over. The big dumb blond brute won. All Nibelungs in Fafner's Forest illegally will now be rounded up and deported.


No I voted when the thread was new. I just felt to write something while browsing though old threads.


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## Retrograde Inversion (Nov 27, 2016)

Another problem Wagner's singers have to contend with is simply that of accurate intonation. In the case of Tristan, that long Act III monologue is both highly fragmentary, with little of the lyricism of Act II, but also extends tonal chromaticism near to breaking point. With most of the Tristans I've heard, it can be difficult to make out what note they're trying to sing, sometimes (Vickers being the great exception).


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Retrograde Inversion said:


> Another problem Wagner's singers have to contend with is simply that of accurate intonation. In the case of Tristan, that long Act III monologue is both highly fragmentary, with little of the lyricism of Act II, but also extends tonal chromaticism near to breaking point. With most of the Tristans I've heard, it can be difficult to make out what note they're trying to sing, sometimes (Vickers being the great exception).


Arguably, precise intonation is more crucial in Wagner than in Italian opera, where the "tune" is more obvious and predictable and our minds can correct for intonational imprecision on the part of singers. Puccini even tends to have the orchestra play the melody along with the singer, helping singers to sound better than they are. Given the wobbles that afflict the voices of so many "dramatic" singers, it can be hard for the listener to be sure of the sung pitch even when the singer himself is sure of it. I'd cite Windgassen as another tenor whose pitch is clear. But no tenor's voice could be more laser-sharp in its pitch focus than Melchior's.


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## Retrograde Inversion (Nov 27, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> Puccini even tends to have the orchestra play the melody along with the singer


In triple octaves! :lol:


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> You just now voted? Didn't they tell you? The election is over. The big dumb blond brute won. All Nibelungs in Fafner's Forest illegally will now be rounded up and deported.


I love coming to Talkclassical, where I can focus on music and forget about politics.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> But no tenor's voice could be more laser-sharp in its pitch focus than Melchior's.


Rhythm, on the other hand . . .


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

amfortas said:


> Rhythm, on the other hand . . .


Yeah, once in a while he jumps the beat or invents his own note values! But if you're not following the score his sheer exuberance can make you believe him. I mean, the man's love of singing is as compelling as his vocal brilliance. (He's accurate most of the time in any case.)


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

amfortas said:


> I love coming to Talkclassical, where I can focus on music and forget about politics.


I rather liked Woodduck's post which even cleverly included characters from an opera.


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## znapschatz (Feb 28, 2016)

DavidA said:


> Siegfried of course has to go through two acts of heavy declaratory singng and then match a soprano who has not sing a note up to then in a rapturous love duet. I am no singer but I can imagine both roles are exceedingly difficult. I often wonder what Wagner was doing writing roles like this which so few can sing properly. Interesting n Parsifal he toned down the tenor role to somethng more manageable. Maybe he realised it himself!





Couac Addict said:


> Contrary to what Wagnerians would want us to believe, Wagner singers don't have it as difficult as they'd like us to think. The tessitura isn't that great in Wagner's work so it just comes down to endurance. How long and often are the arias? The whole "singing over a large Wagnerian orchestra" thing is just talk. They're hired for their timbre - not power.
> 
> Tristan and Siegfried are difficult because they have to sing for ages. Who sings the most? That'd be my choice.
> 
> If you want difficult....try Lulu


My wife grew up in the household of an opera singer and voice teacher, was herself instructed in proper vocal techniques and has definite ideas about Wagnerian demands on singers. She does like the operas, but is very critical of how it affects voices, thinks Wagner is a voice killer. From me, this is second hand because I have no expertise in the matter, but I do know of several singers whom she claims were ruined for anything else but Wagnerian roles because of the effect on their voices, Placido Domingo being one. Somewhere I read that Wagner at some point admitted his music had been a tad too hard on singers, but I don't know what, if anything, came of that insight.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Tristan. No doubt about it.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

znapschatz said:


> Somewhere I read that Wagner at some point admitted his music had been a tad too hard on singers, but I don't know what, if anything, came of that insight.


_Parsifal._
xxxxxxxxx


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

znapschatz said:


> My wife grew up in the household of an opera singer and voice teacher, was herself instructed in proper vocal techniques and has definite ideas about Wagnerian demands on singers. She does like the operas, but is very critical of how it affects voices, thinks Wagner is a voice killer. From me, this is second hand because I have no expertise in the matter, but I do know of several singers whom she claims were ruined for anything else but Wagnerian roles because of the effect on their voices, Placido Domingo being one. *Somewhere I read that Wagner at some point admitted his music had been a tad too hard on singers, but I don't know what, if anything, came of that insight.*


He thought about thinning some of the orchestration in _Tristan_, but never got around to it.


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## Retrograde Inversion (Nov 27, 2016)

I haven't studied the full scores carefully enough to confirm this, but I wonder if the specific issue with Wagner's orchestration regarding his tenor roles is an overwriting at the top of the treble staff, where the tenor voice's first harmonic lies.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Retrograde Inversion said:


> I haven't studied the full scores carefully enough to confirm this, but I wonder if the specific issue with Wagner's orchestration regarding his tenor roles is *an overwriting at the top of the treble staff, where the tenor voice's first harmonic lies.*


Yeah. I'll quote my post #7 earlier in this thread:

_Wagner's heldentenor parts concentrate their most dramatic passages, and call for maximum power, in a part of the voice where tenors recognize a particular difficulty: the "passaggio," that awkward place in the voice around the notes F and G that tenors must learn to negotiate in getting from the "natural" part of the voice to that place where only tenors go. In Verdi and Puccini, the tessitura is higher and allows the singer to move into the upper register for climactic notes. Putting pressure on that "passage" is dangerous for any singer whose technique is less than rock-solid, and if the technique is not firmly in place the result is likely to be the pushed, wobbly sound we get from so many presumptive "heldentenors" whose careers are compromised and shortened thereby._

The tenor voice also doesn't soar over an orchestra the way a soprano voice can. In this regard, I don't think Wagner is as insensitive to singers as he's sometimes thought to be; you'll notice that the singers' phrases are often made to alternate with orchestral gestures rather than compete with them. But there are plenty of passages that really do separate the Melchiors from the boys.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Vickers, of course, was asked to sing Tristan by Karajan shortly after he sung Siegmund on the Leinsdorf recording. He refused. Normally refusing HvK would have been curtains but Karajan but so admired his artistry he was prepared to wait until Vickers was ready. 
Interesting story told by Schoenberg that Melchior got so bored with singing the part he actually fell asleep after his 'death' and Flagstad had to kick him to wake him up as he was snoring.


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## Morton (Nov 13, 2016)

I saw Jon Vickers sing Tristan at Covent Garden in May 1980 (I keep all my programmes), he was magnificent in the first two acts, so imagine my disappointment when it was announced that he was suffering with a throat infection & so would not be singing the third act. There was not a stand-in so we just heard it from where Isolde, sung by Berit Lindholm, enters.
Even with a throat infection I think he would see off most of today's tenors in this role.
I always think the third act Tristan is made all the harder by the plot/producer requiring large parts of it to be sung with him lying down on his sick bed.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Where Vickers as Tristan tells someone to stop coughing in not too polite fashion!


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Another story about Melchior is that he found singing Parsifal tedious so he used to stand as near the side of the stage as possible so he could join in a card game with the stage hands when he wasn't singing.


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

I am seeing Siegfried this afternoon and I'm so excited. It's in a 375-seat theater, with a reduced orchestra (26 players) but I still can't wait.


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