Word: tenors
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...production as a whole was less exciting. German Tenor Karl Liebl, substituting as Tristan for the ailing Ramon Vinay, had neither stage presence nor the power to match the Nilsson salvos. Baritone Walter Cassel as Kurvenal and Bass Jerome Hines as King Mark both turned in workmanlike performances, and Soprano Irene Dalis was impressive as Brangaene. Conductor Karl Boehm led his orchestra through a methodical reading. As for the decor, with the world's best to choose from, the Met had again picked the second-rate. The sets by German Designer Teo Otto were pedestrian and confusing: starkly realistic...
...final scene the audience was deeply moved by Oedipus (Tenor Gerhard Stolze) staggering onstage before Designer Caspar Neher's abstract backdrop (it looked like a microphotograph of a germ culture) and raising his sightless eyes with a beatific smile. Soprano Varnay refused to watch from the wings because "I dream about such things." Reported TIME Correspondent Paul Moor: "For a non-German-speaking audience, this opera has long, boring stretches because the music is so subservient to the text. Nevertheless, Orff has created a theater work of gripping power...
...Conductor Erich Leinsdorf, a Mozart specialist, led the orchestra correctly, but without paprika. Apart from Mezzo Regina Resnik, fine as an old fortuneteller, the only really convincing member of the cast was Walter Slezak, making his Met debut as the pig farmer, Szupán. The son of famed Tenor Leo Slezak, 57-year-old Actor Slezak had wanted to stand on the stage of the Met for as long as he could remember, was delighted when he got his father's old dressing room...
Though without much voice-he classifies himself as a "bastard bari-tenor"-Actor Slezak made the audience laugh almost every time he opened his mouth, particularly at his first-act entrance, when he was bundled in fluttery finery and carried a small live pig (rubber diapered) under his arm. Whatever critics thought of the rest of the performance, no one had an unkind word for Walter. Said he: "Maybe the Met should apologize to me for the mixed reviews; I came out shining like a rose...
Lanza Sings Christmas Carols (RCA Victor Stereo). Tenor Lanza, who recorded this album in Italy not long before his death this fall, sings his carols straight, and they have rarely sounded better: Away in a Manger, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, Silent Night...