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...Brünnhilde in Götterdämmerung is the hardest role in all grand opera. She suffers such violent emotions, has to sing such grueling high passages, that few singers have ever made her sound convincing. Wagner used to pace the floor in anguish while writing Brünnhilde's songs. Time and again he asked himself whether any woman alive would be equal to them. Last week's audience again marveled at Kirsten Flagstad's command of the role, the way she used her strong, rich voice to convey Brünnhilde...
Other new singers were less impressive. Vina Bovy sang carelessly, seldom felt any obligation to act (TIME, Jan. 18). When Gertrud Ruenger, originally a contralto at the Vienna Staatsoper, took the soprano role of Brünnhilde, she sounded shrill and lifeless. John Brownlee, a young Australian baritone, made an indifferent Rigoletto. But Kerstin Thorborg raised the recruits' average with a splendid Fricka...
From Frankfurt a special plane escorted by German air-force fighters carried Schmeling to Berlin where 500 amateur boxers in blue tights waited as a guard of honor with the Realmleader's personal adjutant, Lieutenant Friedrich Wilhelm Brückner. State Secretary Walther Funk of the Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment rushed broad-beamed Max Schmeling off to dine with small, club-footed Paul Joseph Goebbels. "I am delighted with the Hindenburg," said Herr Schmeling. "I hope my fight with Braddock won't be as hard as the one with Louis...
Little grove, green in spring, <BR...
Experimentation was largely limited to new performers who come cheap compared with new productions. Of the 19 new singers, only two achieved a real success. One was Australia's Marjorie Lawrence, who at 28 and with only three years' opera experience undertook the difficult Brünnhildes in Die Walküre and Götterdäm-merung, made news in the latter by mounting her horse, actually galloping from the stage in accordance with Wagner's ambitious directions. The other was Sweden's Gertrud Wettergren, who proved herself a sure singing actress, strode...