Word: wotan
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Grammophon). This recording unites the husband-and-wife team in a sedate but romantic hoedown. Evelyn Lear, most noted for her flamboyant version of Berg's violently atonal Lulu, becomes a demure turtledove in Schumann's Fair Little Flower. Thomas Stewart, memorable for his dour and doomed Wotan, pours out Stephen Foster's Hard Times Come Again No More with as much authority as any cotton-pick-in' baritone in the business...
...restraint made the opera's few moments of overt action all the more effective. As Hero Siegmund and Villain Hunding waged their battle at the end of Act II, a single, blinding white beam split the backdrop, silhouetting the struggle in all its throat-catching violence. When Wotan summoned the magic fire at the finale, the blackness was pierced by a single red spot, transforming Wotan's spear into a tongue of flame; in the inexplicit staging, these moments stood out in a relief that old-fashioned literalness could never achieve. The orchestra, which Von Karajan subdued...
Certainly the approach worked in Walküre. From Tenor Jon Vickers (Siegmund) and Newcomer Gundula Janowitz (Sieglinde), listeners heard the creamy lyricism of Wagner's love music as only unforced vocalism can produce it. American Baritone Thomas Stewart's Wotan had the slight reediness of a singer not fully matured but promising. Nilsson, the Brunnhilde, who can outshout half a dozen Wagnerian orchestras at once, concentrated instead on the compellingly human qualities of the role...
Thus, as Wieland interpreted the Ring cycle, Valhalla would be Wall Street, the heroes Siegfried and Siegmund self-sacrificing astronauts, the temptress Gutrune a mythological call girl, the god Wotan a wheeler-dealer politician, his wife Fricka everybody's nagging mother-in-law, and the spear-carrying Valkyries teen-age Beatle fans. Richard Wagner would have adored it, insisted Wieland. After all, no one despised the old Wagnerite purists more than Grandfather, who delighted in shocking admiring visitors by greeting them at the door on all fours and yapping like a fox terrier...
...London). Following close upon last year's triumphant Gotterdammerung, London completes its new recordings of the complete Ring cycle with a wonderful Walkure. Conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, Georg Solti again heaps high all the sumptuous glories of the Wagnerian orchestra, at the same time charging every passage of Wotan's family fracas with drama. The lush and beautiful singing is alive with emotion, the stars being an international assemblage of accomplished artists: Birgit Nilsson as Briinnhilde, Regine Crespin as Sieglinde, Christa Ludwig as Fricka, and Hans Hotter as Wotan. Not quite so great but still outstanding are James...