# Favorite Heldentenors



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

This is not my forte so I'm doing it so you people can edumacate me as we say down South. Who do you really enjoy? For myself Melchior and Vickers are my two favortes, with Melchior in a class by himself.. More recently I loved loved loved Hepner as Tristan in Seattle. Jay Hunter Morris and Siegfried Jerusalem are fine singers and really look very handsome in the part... which helps. Jonas Kaufmann is my favorite current Heldentenor and he, also, is a matinee idol onstage. I was impressed with Clifton Forbis in Seattle. There are others I enjoy as well such as Domingo and Windgassen. Which tenors really get you going??? Let's start a discussion. I didn't do a poll as I didn't know where to begin with so many.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

Seattleoperafan said:


> This is not my forte so I'm doing it so you people can edumacate me as we say down South. Who do you really enjoy? For myself Melchior and Vickers are my two favortes, with Melchior in a class by himself.. More recently I loved loved loved Hepner as Tristan in Seattle. Jay Hunter Morris and Siegfried Jerusalem are fine singers and really look very handsome in the part... which helps. Jonas Kaufmann is my favorite current Heldentenor and he, also, is a matinee idol onstage. I was impressed with Clifton Forbis in Seattle. There are others I enjoy as well such as Domingo and Windgassen. Which tenors really get you going??? Let's start a discussion. I didn't do a poll as I didn't know where to begin with so many.


Melchior. no contest whatsoever...


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## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

I am not a male voice expert but when does that stop one from pretending......

*Jess Thomas*...........the perfect swan knight for me in the early 1960s, beautiful golden lyric soft voice with heroic power, his tale of the land of the grail knights "in fernem land" is pure wagner magic, just spellbinding stuff! Some memorable Parsifal performances also during that time


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## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

*Set Svanholm*..........Before Windgassen rose to prominence during the mid 1950s Bayreuth seasons I have heard a couple 1940-50s Seigfried performances by Svanholm which impressed me more in some ways than any I had heard by Windgassen, very expressive and deeper more commanding force that the lighter voiced Windgassen, also a very beautiful lyric tone, impressive on the 50 Furtwangler Ring


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## howlingfantods (Jul 27, 2015)

Lorenz then Melchior are my easy top two. Lorenz is more passionate and intense and wild--I forget if it was DFD or Kollo who said it but they said something once about how Lorenz would attack the words like a lion. Melchior sings more beautifully but can come off a little disengaged at times.

Windgassen doesn't have the instrument that Lorenz and Melchior did but was as indefatigable and versatile, excelling in all the major Wagnerian tenor roles. 

After that, there are singers I like in specific roles but not all of them--Vickers, Vinay, King and Kaufmann in Siegmund and Parsifal and the occasional Tristan, Jerusalem and Svanholm as Siegfried, Thomas, Konya, Heppner, Domingo in the more lyrical roles like Walther and Lohengrin.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

It's really necessary to set Melchior aside when comparing heldentenors. He was a one-off, a freak of nature, and if we compare other voices to his we almost have to conclude that there has been only one heldentenor in the recording era. He wasn't perfect; his soft singing could be foggy, he sometimes clipped note values or rushed the tempo, seemingly out of sheer enthusiasm. But his minor flaws hardly matter. His singing was grounded in a technique so solid that he never had to force his voice, and it lasted with hardly any deterioration well into his sixties, an age at which most Wagnerian voices are no longer listenable, even if their owners are rash enough to employ them. His Wagner style, notable for its declamatory force, was nevertheless grounded in a rock-firm legato, and he was able to sing Italian opera very well, even if he had little opportunity to do so. As an interpreter he was really quite imaginative, always responsive to the words, and he could create that seemingly impossible illusion, an impulsive, high-spirited, boyish Siegfried with a godlike voice. Absolutely every vocal or dramatic challenge Wagner threw at his tenors was child's play for Melchior, and the only role he chose not to sing was Walther in _Meistersinger,_, finding its tessitura too consistently high for comfort. The other tenor roles all allowed him to move freely between his dark low register (he began as a baritone, like many Wagner tenors) and his brilliant high notes, which he had a wonderful way of taking head on with a precise but easy attack and opening up to blazing intensity, the very opposite of the brute force which so many singers feel they must employ to sound powerful and dramatic.

Melchior is most famous for his Tristan, which can be heard in numerous excerpts and complete performances (complete with "traditional" cuts - I don't know whether any are truly complete), singing with such great sopranos as Leider, Flagstad and Traubel. But I think I love him most as Parsifal, in which I heard him first in a studio recording of the act two scene with Kundry, but later in an even more powerful live performance. He is alive to every nuance of feeling in this tortured music, and no one has ever equaled his masterful employment of a voice able to express agony and spiritual beauty at once. Similarly untouchable is his heroic rendering of Parsifal's final lines in the opera, from "Nur eine waffe taugt" to the end. The exaltation is almost superhuman. Here he is:


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

DarkAngel said:


> *Set Svanholm*..........Before Wingassen rose to prominence during the mid 1950s Bayreuth seasons I have heard a couple 1940-50s Seigfried performances by Svanholm which impressed me more in some ways than any I had heard by Windgassen, very expressive and deeper more commanding force that the lighter voiced Windgassen, also a very beautiful lyric tone, impressive on the 50 Furtwangler Ring


Svanholm in his prime was a terrific Siegfried, both powerful and youthful sounding, with enough stamina to get through most of _Siegfried_ without tiring. I say "most," because in the performance I heard (the 1950 La Scala shown above) he had to fake a few passages toward the end, but then he was able to hide behind Flagstad part of the time! You can hear his Siegfried on YouTube.


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## howlingfantods (Jul 27, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> It's really necessary to set Melchior aside when comparing heldentenors. He was a one-off, a freak of nature, and if we compare other voices to his we almost have to conclude that there has been only one heldentenor in the recording era. He wasn't perfect; his soft singing could be foggy, he sometimes clipped note values or rushed the tempo, seemingly out of sheer enthusiasm. But his minor flaws hardly matter. His singing was grounded in a technique so solid that he never had to force his voice, and it lasted with hardly any deterioration well into his sixties, an age at which most Wagnerian voices are no longer listenable, even if their owners are rash enough to employ them. His Wagner style, notable for its declamatory force, was nevertheless grounded in a rock-firm legato, and he was able to sing Italian opera very well, even if he had little opportunity to do so. As an interpreter he was really quite imaginative, always responsive to the words, and he could create that seemingly impossible illusion, an impulsive, high-spirited, boyish Siegfried with a godlike voice. Absolutely every vocal or dramatic challenge Wagner threw at his tenors was child's play for Melchior, and the only role he chose not to sing was Walther in _Meistersinger,_, finding its tessitura too consistently high for comfort. The other tenor roles all allowed him to move freely between his dark low register (he began as a baritone, like many Wagner tenors) and his brilliant high notes, which he had a wonderful way of taking head on with a precise but easy attack and opening up to blazing intensity, the very opposite of the brute force which so many singers feel they must employ to sound powerful and dramatic.
> 
> Melchior is most famous for his Tristan, which can be heard in numerous excerpts and complete performances (complete with "traditional" cuts - I don't know whether any are truly complete), singing with such great sopranos as Leider, Flagstad and Traubel. But I think I love him most as Parsifal, in which I heard him first in a studio recording of the act two scene with Kundry, but later in an even more powerful live performance. He is alive to every nuance of feeling in this tortured music, and no one has ever equaled his masterful employment of a voice able to express agony and spiritual beauty at once. Similarly untouchable is his heroic rendering of Parsifal's final lines in the opera, from "Nur eine waffe taugt" to the end. The exaltation is almost superhuman. Here he is:


Here's Lorenz in the same Parsifal clips as what you included for Melchior. Both amazingly great and so different.

1942 with Kna at the Wiener Staatsoper





1933 with Strauss at Bayreuth


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Peter Hofmann, pretty impressive :tiphat:


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Jess Thomas for me............


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

While I am sure that there will be disagreement as to whether he was truly a heldentenor, I always found Alberto Remedios' voice to be beautiful and appropriate for the young Siegmund & Siegfried and, as I still vividly remember, he looked great in the parts. While this _Peter Grimes_ excerpt is not a heldentenor role, it is the only good video I have found of him and it is a role which another great tenor, Jon Vickers, also excelled in. To see Remedios, skip to the 8.25 mark


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Itullian said:


> Jess Thomas for me............


I've seen a video excerpt of a scene with Nilsson and he was really wonderful as well as looking suitably heroic. Also the first act duet with Jessye Norman early in her career that rocks.


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## sospiro (Apr 3, 2010)

I don't know much about them as I don't know Wagner (which seems to be where heldentenors are usually found) but I did see Stuart Skelton in ENO's _Peter Grimes_ and he was stunning.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

ok, I retract my previous statement. Melchior is still better, but James King comes pretty close


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Pugg said:


> Peter Hofmann, pretty impressive :tiphat:


He had the advantage of looking the part too!


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

No question in my mind the late Jon Vickers was the greatest heldentenor of more recent times. His performances of Wagner roles (he never did Siegfried), Radames, Otello, and Florestan are all incomperable. And you can add Peter Grimesto that although not a heldentenor role.


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

Melchior, then. Skelton, today.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

howlingfantods said:


> Here's Lorenz in the same Parsifal clips as what you included for Melchior. Both amazingly great and so different.
> 
> 1942 with Kna at the Wiener Staatsoper
> 
> ...


These are really interesting. I do want to hear more of Lorenz to get a better idea of him. From what I've heard up to now (not too much), his voice and style seem a bit wild and manic - not out of control, but somehow hinting at it (sort of like Judy Garland, if that isn't sacrilege!). I can see where this sense of "danger" could be exciting. Maybe a better comparison would be with soprano Martha Modl, a powerful performer with a vocal technique whose on-the-edgeness adds a sort of drama to her performances which her fans love but which I have to say makes me, as a former singer, uncomfortable.

It may sound odd in a heldentenor context, but I think Melchior, for all his declamatory force, embodies a bel canto ideal of singing, in which a steady stream of pure, free, vibrant tone, produced without pushing, is sought and maintained at all times, and expression is found within the body of the sound, not applied to it. His maintenance of this solid technique is what enabled his voice to remain virtually unchanged in his 60s after a long career of singing the most demanding roles in opera. I notice the slowness of Lorenz's vibrato in 1942, slow enough at times to let us count the beats. That's a consequence of putting the voice under pressure, and it commonly afflicts dramatic voices as they age. Here's a clip I just found of Lorenz singing "Wintersturme" in 1929, when he was 28:






That's only 13 years earlier than the 1942 Parsifal excerpt, and yet how much faster the vibrato is! It's the same thing I heard in Astrid Varnay, whose voice at age 22 had such freedom and spin, but after just a decade of Wagner had become heavy and throbbing, hardly recognizable. Becoming a heldentenor or hochdramatische soprano in one's twenties does seem a perilous move for many.

Now that you have me interested, perhaps you can recommend some other recordings that show Lorenz at his best, either vocally or dramatically. I suspect I need to experience him in full roles, or at least extended scenes, to appreciate him fully.


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## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

Ten famous heldentenors sing high "C" from Gotterdammerung Act 3, no orchestral backing here just voice, what say ye....






#10 Jean Cox not too well known but is in a couple Stein Bayreuth Rings from early 1970s holds up quite well in a heady group.....

That hair style of Windgassen is unreal, straight from the pokeman cartoon series :lol:

42 Svanholm from this CD:


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

Franz Völker is one of my favorites:


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

DarkAngel said:


> Ten famous heldentenors sing high "C" from Gotterdammerung Act 3, no orchestral backing here just voice, what say ye....
> 
> 
> 
> ...


He was playing Loge there, of course. The "hair on fire" look, due to come back in this spring.

The only solidly sung high C was Melchior's. Everyone else's was a yell or a grunt, though Lorenz was pretty good. Some of them couldn't even get the words right! How hard is "hoi ho, hoi he"? I guess terror of high C erases memory.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> These are really interesting. I do want to hear more of Lorenz to get a better idea of him. From what I've heard up to now (not too much), his voice and style seem a bit wild and manic - not out of control, but somehow hinting at it (sort of like Judy Garland, if that isn't sacrilege!). I can see where this sense of "danger" could be exciting. Maybe a better comparison would be with soprano Martha Modl, a powerful performer with a vocal technique whose on-the-edgeness adds a sort of drama to her performances which her fans love but which I have to say makes me, as a former singer, uncomfortable.
> 
> It may sound odd in a heldentenor context, but I think Melchior, for all his declamatory force, embodies a bel canto ideal of singing, in which a steady stream of pure, free, vibrant tone, produced without pushing, is sought and maintained at all times, and expression is found within the body of the sound, not applied to it. His maintenance of this solid technique is what enabled his voice to remain virtually unchanged in his 60s after a long career of singing the most demanding roles in opera. I notice the slowness of Lorenz's vibrato in 1942, slow enough at times to let us count the beats. That's a consequence of putting the voice under pressure, and it commonly afflicts dramatic voices as they age. Here's a clip I just found of Lorenz singing "Wintersturme" in 1929, when he was 28:
> 
> ...


Lorenz is Keilberth's Siegfried in Gotterdammerung at Bayreuth in 1952. He is pretty good but can be all over the place at times.


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## howlingfantods (Jul 27, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> These are really interesting. I do want to hear more of Lorenz to get a better idea of him. From what I've heard up to now (not too much), his voice and style seem a bit wild and manic - not out of control, but somehow hinting at it (sort of like Judy Garland, if that isn't sacrilege!). I can see where this sense of "danger" could be exciting. Maybe a better comparison would be with soprano Martha Modl, a powerful performer with a vocal technique whose on-the-edgeness adds a sort of drama to her performances which her fans love but which I have to say makes me, as a former singer, uncomfortable.
> 
> It may sound odd in a heldentenor context, but I think Melchior, for all his declamatory force, embodies a bel canto ideal of singing, in which a steady stream of pure, free, vibrant tone, produced without pushing, is sought and maintained at all times, and expression is found within the body of the sound, not applied to. His maintenance of this solid technique is what enabled his voice to remain virtually unchanged in his 60s after a long career of singing the most demanding roles in opera. I notice the slowness of Lorenz's vibrato in 1942, slow enough at times to let us count the beats. That's a consequence of putting the voice under pressure, and it commonly afflicts dramatic voices as they age. Here's a clip I just found of Lorenz singing "Wintersturme" in 1929, when he was 28:
> 
> ...


I think the comparison with Modl is kind of apt--both stage animals who esteemed expression over beauty of tone. The difference being that Lorenz's instrument is significantly better than Modl's. Lorenz was a true tenor with a ringing and secure high notes where I think Modl was more naturally suited to mezzo roles and was audibly strained in her high notes. I don't think he really is a cautionary tale--his career was lengthy and he declined like a normal mortal around his mid 40s through his retirement in his mid 50s. Melchior of course was a freak of nature who lasted an extra decade over anyone else doing this repertoire.

The only complete recording I'm aware of of him at close to his peak is the Tristan from 1943 with Paula Buchner, Klose, Prohaska, with Heger conducting. It's staggering, and his performance in Act 3 especially is amazing. The sound is pretty vivid but I think the singers were too closely miked--there's some distortion at the peaks. It's my current favorite recording, although it's also true that I've called like 4 different Tristans my favorite over the past few years 

Here's a clip each from Act 2 and 3









By the 50s, his voice wasn't what it was, but his Gotterdammerung Siegfried under Furtwangler at La Scala is still one of my absolute favorites. He repeated the role again in 1952 with Keilberth at Bayreuth, and then a Siegmund in 1954 also with Keilberth at Bayreuth. His other close to complete recording is the Furtwangler Meistersinger from 1943, but I don't think Walther was really his role.

Here some random great clips:
A terrific Inbrust im Herzen from Tannhauser




Mein lieber Schwan




A wonderful Allmacht'ger Vater





He was also pretty highly esteemed for his Otello and was invited to perform it at La Scala, but he turned them down because he didn't think his Italian good enough. Unfortunately I can't find any good examples of his Otello, but here's a Celeste Aida in German:






A not always super discreet gay man with a Jewish wife as the biggest star taking the most heroic of Wagner roles in Bayreuth, he had some unusual stresses in his life, where he was both protected and condemned by the authorities. I think his reputation would be higher profile and possibly his recorded legacy much richer had he been able to leave Germany, but I think by the time it became clear to him that he should, it was already too late, and he was not allowed to travel with his wife.

At the tail end of his career, he was mentor and coach to a number of young up and coming tenors who are pretty well represented in mentions here--Jess Thomas, Jean Cox, and especially James King, who he coached in all the major Wagner tenor roles.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

This is a very good documentary on Lorenz unfortunately titled Wagners Mastersinger, Hitler's Siegfried!


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