Following up on the latest new production of Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, which began its series of five performances by San Francisco Opera this past Saturday, I was inevitably drawn to my collection of recordings. These included the recent addition of the Naxos box set in its Great Opera Recordings series. This consisted of three CDs, each accounting for one of the opera’s three acts. This attracted my attention because the conductor was Fritz Reiner. While Reiner was best known as the Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, he spent many years in the orchestra pit of the Metropolitan Opera from the mid-Forties to the early Sixties. (He died in November of 1963.)
Kirsten Flagstad on the cover of the album being discussed (from its Amazon.com Web page)
Reiner’s RCA albums included relatively few instrumental excerpts from Wagner operas, so I welcomed the opportunity to listen to his take on one of those operas in its entirety. The Naxos album involved an “amalgam” of two performances, which took place on May 18 and June 2, 1936. These were concert, rather than staged, occasions with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden sang with a full cast of soloists led by tenor Lauritz Melchior and soprano Kirsten Flagstad in the title roles.
The second half of this opera is where the “action” is at its most intense, and that intensity begins with the instrumental Prelude. Reiner captured the anxiety behind the opening scene in which Isolde is waiting (impatiently) for Tristan’s arrival. This amounts to a “slow burn” in which the fire finally emerges with full passion at the very beginning of the second scene. As might be guessed, the overall dynamic range of the recording of this episode is far more limited in what we encounter through more sophisticated audio technology. Nevertheless, the passion is in the vocal work; and there are no end of engaging nuances that the attentive listener encounters in the deliveries by both Flagstad and Melchior. (Ironically, last night I happened to be viewing a video of Melchior visiting Victor Borge, which was about as distant from the dramatics of Tristan as one might expect!)
To be fair, I tend to be forgiving about most of my encounters with recordings made during the first half of the twentieth century. I appreciate efforts to filter out as much “noise” as possible; but, at least with current technology, there is only so much one can do to enhance the signal! To the extent that one can listen “through” that noise, there is much to be gained from the dramatic qualities brought to this album by all of the contributing vocalists, not only Flagstad and Melchior but particularly bass Emanuel List as Marke, the King of Cornwall that was supposed to marry Isolde. Similarly, soprano Sabine Kalter as Brangäne conveys the frustration in her efforts to remind her mistress Isolde to “get real!”
Will I revisit this “historical” account of a recording that is almost a century old? I suppose the best answer would be, “Probably, but not frequently!” For the most part, I tend to be more interested in what today’s vocalists can do with their repertoire. Nevertheless, Flagstad and Melchior were the giants of their day. Given that I was born in 1946, they were firmly at their peak before then. However, I shall always be curious about major events that were “before my time;” and this Naxos release allows me to reflect on one of them!
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