Word: tristan
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...Most of the critics' reviews-and raves-went to U.S.-born Soprano Marion Talley, who made her debut in the evening. "She lasted five years," according to the Met's Robinson. Melchior's day finally came in 1929 during his first performance in Tristan at the Met. After that Melchior reigned as opera's supreme heldentenor...
...work, which sometimes invited criticism. He scorned rehearsals, frequently played hooky and provoked one conductor to waspishly observe that, if nothing else, one could depend on Melchior to make the same mistakes. While that judgment was harsh, it is true that during one of his umpteen performances of Tristan, Melchior fell asleep onstage, waking only when the mighty Flagstad fell over him at the conclusion of the Liebestod. But his dedication to his art was such that when he fractured his big toe during a performance of Die Walküre at the Met, he managed to hold his note...
...Berger, Ludwig never consults a plan, hectors an architect or drives a construction foreman crazy. Visconti doesn't even make anything humanly or dramatically interesting out of Ludwig's other major project-rescuing Richard Wagner (Trevor Howard) from his debts and subsidizing the première of Tristan and the beginning of work on the Ring Cycle. Such activities imply a mysterious will and energy that cries out for interpretive speculation; but this would interfere with Visconti's simple view of Ludwig as a moony homosexual victim of his era's political and intellectual climate...
...Wagner, Tristan und Isolde (Tenor Jon Vickers, Soprano Helga Dernesch, Soprano Christa Ludwig, Baritone Walter Berry, Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan conducting; Angel, 5 LPs, $29.90). What a cast of performers! What a disappointment! Given Karajan's past flair for Wagner, not to mention stalwart Tenor Vickers as Tristan, this could well have been, the stereo statement of Wagner's endless paean to adultery. Instead, it is merely a smooth, workmanlike job, hampered by Dernesch's inability to make Isolde alive enough so that her death is significant. The record is also marred by the cavernous, "first...
...fourth and final movement seemed dedicated to Wagner - first the somber three-note motif from the Ring cycle, then a bare but undisguised hint of love theme from Tristan und Isolde...