by Adriel Bettelheim

Hungarian soprano Maria Nemeth was one of the most celebrated divas at the Vienna State Opera between the world wars.  She also was a contemporary of the great Lotte Lehman and Maria Jeritza, which may explain her relative obscurity today.  She is remembered, if at all, for her portrayal of Turandot, a part Lehman, another prominent essayer of the role, once confessed she liked “only when Nemeth sings it.”

Existing recordings of Nemeth as Puccini’s ice princess don’t do her justice, either because of poor sound quality or because she had an off day. Her discography, in general, doesn’t give a complete portrait of her work because she abandoned the recording studio for unstated reasons at age 32 -- 17 years before she quit the stage for good. But her forays into Verdi, Mozart and other corners of the repertory are well represented on early electrical recordings, some of which have been skillfully re-mastered as part of Hnssler’s Living Voices series.  This CD reveals a remarkably versatile artist, at home both in the stratospheric heights of Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio and Goldmark’s Queen of Sheba and in smoldering heavy Verdi roles, such as Aida or the Leonores from La Forza del Destino and Il Trovatore. 

Three excerpts from Aida , including “Ritorna vincitor” and “O patria mia,” give the listener a sense of how Nemeth electrified audiences in the 1920s.  Her large voice has a metallic edge with an intensely focused tone quality that could cut through the thickest orchestral and choral accompaniments.  Nemeth may have lacked the wide column of sound and dusky chest tones one commonly associates with the Italian repertory, but her breath support easily accommodated Verdi’s long phrases. Neither does she flinch at his show-stopping high notes.  Her take on Amelia’s second act gallows aria from Un Ballo in Maschera is at once elegant and gripping, capped by an effortless high C.  The aria is one of several Verdi numbers that Nemeth sings in German. 

Nemeth’s take on the soprano showpieces from the Abduction from the Seraglio are somewhat less satisfying.  The runs in “Martern aller Arten” are sloppy and too fast, and the top notes, while precise, have a brittle, rat-tat-tat edge. “Act ich liebte” has more style, with much attention paid to Mozart’s symmetrical phrases. 

Nemeth is in top form in two arias from Queen of Sheba, by her fellow Hungarian Karl Goldmark. This once-hugely popular work is firmly rooted in the German romantic tradition but also has unmistakable hints of Wagner’s influence. Nemeth handles the punishing high tessitura with ease and spins the long vocal lines with a stately confidence, as if she owns the part.  Though she may have lacked the glamour of Jeritza or the charisma of her successor Ljuba Welitsch, this is an artist who was all too quickly forgotten.

 

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