Word: heldentenor
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...orchestra (under Joseph Rosenstock), scenery (by H. A. Condell) and singers. James Pease made the role of Sachs, the cobbler-poet, glow with gentle wisdom. The little second-act rage of the blonde Eva (Soprano Frances Yeend) was as charmingly impetuous as it should be. Her Walther (young German Heldentenor Hans Beirer) was impassioned, and in notable voice, in the Prize Song. And for once there was a Beckmesser (Baritone Emile Renan) who kept his comedy on the right side of slapstick. Altogether, it was a Meistersinger done with tender wit and the kind of freshness and spirit that brings...
Burly Tenor Ramon (Otello) Vinay was in a sweat. A Chilean trained for Italian and French opera, he had worked hard for over a year to huff himself into a German-style Heldentenor, and he was all set to sing his first Tristan, with Kirsten Flagstad as Isolde. San Franciscans (and Metropolitan Opera General Manager Rudolf Bing, who sorely needs a successor to Lauritz Melchior) were all set to hear him. But a fortnight ago, with debut day almost at hand, Tenor Vinay was bogged down in Chile. A stubborn Santiago impresario refused to let him leave the country until...
...from the wings in midweek came the roar of a wounded lion. Fifty-nine-year-old Heldentenor Lauritz Melchior had heard nothing yet about a contract and he thought he should have been approached before "all the small ones." His manager fired off a telegram to Bing demanding to know by next day where Melchior stood. Replied Rudi Bing coldly: "I am not prepared to submit to ultimatums...
...Angeles, Lauritz Melchior announced with a Heldentenor's roar that he would put on opera if the Met wouldn't. Said he: "It's a scandal, a disaster. The eyes of the world are turned to America and the greatest country in the world cannot even have an opera house! It looks as if we're only interested in jazz and crooning and all the semi-things...
...stage, the beefy Wagnerian gods of Gotterdämmerung snorted and bellowed in their Valhalla. In the wings, a huge Siegfried, mounted on a ladder, sagged his 230 Ibs. down onto waiting shoulders to be borne on stage. "I'm getting too fat for this," grumbled hefty Heldentenor Lauritz Melchior. A warrior-god charged into musty corners, looking for his sword; bored spear carriers fumbled through a prop basket full of hunting horns. Behind the backdrop a ragged army of stagehands lounged on the rocks of the Rhine (out of use for the moment), gulping coffee from paper cartons...