Word: melchior
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...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 and jeering...
Metropolitan Opera (Sat. 2 p.m., ABC). Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, with Helen Traubel and Lauritz Melchior...
Wagner: Tristan und Isolde, Love Duet (Helen Traubel, soprano; Torsten Ralf, tenor; Herta Glaz, contralto, with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Fritz Busch conducting; Columbia, 4 sides). Traubel & Ralf take the famed love duet faster than Flagstad and Melchior. The result is surprisingly warmer, and the orchestral setting is fuller. Recording: good...
Season-ticket subscribers, who buy their season's supply of opera without knowing what they are getting, were beginning to wonder. The Met had stars who could both sing and act-Melchior, Tagliavini, Traubel, Albanese, Pons, Pinza. Four out of the six had yet to be heard this season. Some stars whom season subscribers paid to see now put in only two or three "prestige" performances a year to keep their names bright for the movies and the cigarette ads, the guest appearances on Sinatra programs, and the fat recording contracts...
...dilapidated, 20-year-old scenery for the Ring will be new sets by Broadway Designer Lee Simonson. Some scenes will be done for the first time with screen projections, an economy trick borrowed from the New York City Opera Co. Most of the glamorous old stars-Pinza, Pons, Traubel, Melchior-are back, and 14 new singers, six of them homegrown...