The sheer length
of Wagner's
Götterdämmerung
("The Twilight of the Gods"), at something over five hours,
precludes many productions. When it is staged, more often than
not, it is given as the climactic conclusion of the Ring
tetralogy, not merely as a narrative resolution of the saga
between gods and men, but a spiritual experience of musical and
theatrical profundity towards apotheosis.
This
particular issue of
Götterdämmerung
is an historic testament to such an experience. Recorded live on
11 January 1936 at the Metropolitan Opera, this performance is
nigh memorable on several levels. A vertiable "United Nations"
of the world's leading singers had been assembled in New York
which even Bayreuth would have been hard-pressed to beat: the
Melbourne-born Marjorie Lawrence and Danish tenor Lauritz
Melchoir as Brünnhilde and Siegfried, Hungarian Fredrich Schorr
as Gunther, German bass Ludwig Hofmann as the villainous Hagen,
his compatriot Eduard Habich as a darkly-voiced Alberich, led by
the Austrian conductor (and former assistant to Gustav Mahler at
the Vienna State Opera) Artur Bodanzky (above).
Bodanzky was the
resident Wagnerian specialist at the Met for over twenty years -
he conducted virtually ever production of Wagner there during
his tenure - but at the same time, was also known to sanction
cuts to make his productions more palatable. Thus, this
recording weighs in at something just over three hours and forty
minutes, including the infamous first act substantally trimmed
from two hours thirty minutes down to a "mere" hour forty.
This
recording is also notable as Melchoir's (picture) only
surviving recording in the role of Siegfried. He was a noted
Wagnerian
Heldentenor in his
time and sang Tristan well over two hundred times (one of which
has been released on Naxos Historical 8.110008-10).
Unfortunately, we can't hear Melchoir's ringing timbre with as
much detail and clarity as we'd like, which is a great pity: for
example, in Siegfried's death scene, you can feel the raw pathos
in his seeking forgiveness and redemption from Brünnhilde, but
that's about all you
can
hear.
Friedrich
Schorr (picture) was also a renowned Wagnerian in his own
right, with the roles of Hans Sachs, the Dutchman, Amfortas,
Wotan and Gunther (which he plays here) in his repertory folder.
Ludwig Hofmann's appearance as Hagen also held some sentimental
value: it was this role in which he had made his Met
début four years previously. Joined by the husky-toned Eduard
Habich as Alberich, these gentlemen bring the villainy of the
piece to life as they connive and plot Siegfried's downfall (and
inadvertently the destruction of Valhalla, as well as the
destruction of the universe as they know it) through the first
two acts. The trio between Schorr, Hofmann and Marjorie Lawrence
in Siegfrieds Tod
at the conclusion of the second act is not to be missed for
diehard Ring Cyclists.
Bodanzky's
conducting of the orchestra here is quite possibly the weak link
(in a chain of super-stellar vocalists, one should add): the
playing is ofttimes predictable and Wagner's subtle musical
subtext doesn't always quite match the level of the singing. If
Siegfried's Rhine Journey
in the first act is at least punctilious, then his
Funeral March
in the last act is quite predictable, even perfunctory.
On
the other hand, the undisputed highlight of this recording must
surely be the Australian soprano Marjorie Lawrence
(picture),
whose real-life tragedy was no less dramatic than the roles she
played onstage. Foreshadowing the vicissitudes of Jackie du Pre,
Lawrence lost the ability to walk unaided after contracting
poliomyelitis during
Die Walküre
in Mexico City in 1941, yet went on to sing Venus in 1943 and
Isolde in 1944 before retiring to teach at university.
As one of the youngest
sopranos ever to tackle the role of Brünnhilde - Lawrence was
only 29 (or 27, depending on whom you believe) when she made her
Met début in this performance, giving Kirsten Flagstad, 14 years
her senior and the other soprano at the Met who had laid claim
to the Ring's three Brünnhildes and Sieglinde, a serious run for
her money. The contrast between the two sopranos could not have
been greater, not just in age, but in temperament. Kirsten was
Nordic, restrained and coolly aristocratic; Lawrence, from the
Australian outback of Dean's Marsh, was an unfettered spirit, an
outdoor girl and a skilled horsewoman.
And thus, the horse: the
climactic finale of
Götterdämmerung
is a challenge for those who would follow Wagner's literal
instructions to have Brünnhilde ride a live animal into her
funeral pyre, for both singers and directors: how many leading
ladies at the opera would, let alone "could", mount and control
a horse onstage? (Compromises with sopranos leading horses
offstage, or worse, having no animal at all, were very common.)
Lawrence set a new
watermark in operatic history: it was this performance, her New
York début as the
Götterdämmerung
Brünnhilde, that she mounted and rode a real horse onto her
stage funeral pyre. The audience's gasps and applause can be
heard on this recording, and we can only imagine their
astonishment. Yet there is a great deal here which is more
memorable than Lawrence's saddleside hijinks, such as her
freshness of timbre and clarity of reading in the role, the
passion and travails of a woman both ravishing and ravshed.
Brünnhilde's immolation scene, coming at the end of nearly four
hours, is in Lawrence's full
throat-bursting fettle and one cannot miss the
gravitas
of the occasion, even through the grainy tone.
If only the original
recording had been less roughshod... This release has been
transferred and supervised by the skilled Ward Marston, but
there's not much to be done if the original quality wasn't quite
there to begin with. There are the expected passages of erratic
volume levels and balance, with the orchestra often quite muddy
in comparison to the singers (which is not really a gripe, being
that the singers are what you'd want to listen out for, anyway).
Like all Naxos operatic issues, there is only a synopsis of the
opera, indexed to the individual track numbers - but collectors
coming to this recording would not be first-timers to
Götterdämmerung.
Its value is historical, above all.
