Word: lauritz
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Wagner: Love Duet and Liebestod from Tristan, Brünnhilde's Immolation from Götterdämmerung (San Francisco Opera Orchestra, Edwin McArthur conducting, with Kirsten Flagstad and Lauritz Melchior; Victor: ten sides). Souvenir of a great operatic team which may soon be heard no more (TIME, Jan. 22). Conductor McArthur's shyly reticent accompaniment keeps it from being as good as it should...
First, massive Tenor Lauritz Melchior publicly denounced Leinsdorf's wayward tempos and lack of experience, found him "not yet ready to be senior conductor of the finest department of the greatest opera house in the world." Next, famed Diva Kirsten Flagstad, who was staying away from the opera house with grippe, hinted to friends that she might not go back unless Conductor Leinsdorf was replaced. It was no secret to the Manhattan music world that Diva Flagstad was backing a favorite young maestro of her own: U. S.-born Conductor Edwin McArthur, who had been conducting all her performances...
...Melchior stayed on. Not long afterward, Soprano Talley's bubble had burst, and Manhattan operagoers began to think that Melchior was the best all-round Heldentenor they had heard since Jean de Reszke. As the years went by, and Wagnerian opera became the Met's specialty, sturdy Lauritz Melchior rolled up a world's record for Wagnerian trouping. To date he has sung 188 Siegfrieds, 138 Siegmunds, 104 Tannhusers, 54 Parsifals, 68 Lohengrins and 163 Tristans-nearly twice as many as the great Jean de Reszke himself...
Today, rotund, greying, 49-year-old Lauritz Melchior, the best Heldentenor of them all, is content to rest on his laurels. The father of two grown children (by his first wife, Danish-born Inger Nathansen, who died in 1927), he occasionally frets about 22-year-old Son Ib's cinema ambitions in Hollywood, keeps 19-year-old Daughter Birte hard at her business-school courses in Copenhagen. Though he diets in summer to keep his weight down to 225 Ibs., he takes his winter opera performances in his stride, often eats heavy meals before he goes to the opera...
...tenants of the Ansonia do not need to be reminded that Heldentenor Melchior is a Dane. Melchior himself never forgets it either. On his island castle in Germany he always flies the Danish flag. And on the door of his Manhattan apartment is a sign. It reads: "Lauritz Melchior, singer to the Royal Court of Denmark...