From: conrad@brahms.udel.edu (Jon Conrad)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: Valkyrie recordings
Date: 30 Dec 92 22:41:28 GMT
Organization: University of Delaware

In article <uR35VB1w165w@dorsai.com> shire@dorsai.com (Kenneth Shire) writes:

>Jon, may I enter a dissenting vote.  Having suffered through all of the 
>Vickers performances as Siegmund at the Met back in 1974 (?) when the Met 
>ran its pathetic Karajan-abandoned-and-Weber-finished Ring cyle, the man 
>was insufferably self-important both on-stage 

I didn't find him so in the 1972 Walkeure, which I saw.  Nor the
Parsifal at the Met in about 1977.  Nor in the Grimes and Fidelio which 
I saw in Chicago later.

>and in the interviews he 
>gave blowing his own horn 

Agreed.  But so what?  If we attend Wagner operas at all, we've learned
to distinguish between people's artistic behavior and "offstage"
behavior, right?

Sure, Vickers, whenever he was allowed to talk about himself (or
anything), was a pretentious jerk.  But every performance I ever saw him
give onstage (which, alas, was only the 4 I listed) was time-capsule
stuff.

>To my ears, Vickers 
>had a bleaty instrument of the James Macracken school of vocal technique. 

At his most extreme, he could get that way.  (Look up Conrad L.
Osborne's admiring-but-exasperated description of his voice and style in
an early issue of OPUS.)  But also capable of a pure kind of beauty
beyond McCracken.

>As long as the thread is on to great tenors, has anyone actually 
>seen-and-heard Reiner Goldberg in any Wagnerian roles?  The rumor is that 
>he has a small but exquisite voice, though I haven't read anything about 
>his acting ability.  All news on this gratefully accepted.

I saw his "older" Siegfried at Bayreuth in 1988, the second cycle of the
first year of the Kupfer/Barenboim production.  Siegfried Jerusalem had
surprised us all by his commanding presentation of the younger Siegfried
two night before.  Goldberg was just kind of blah.  Not awful, and at
moments he revealed some promising vocal material.  But he really hadn't
a clue what to do with his voice or any of the music.  I would not agree
with your description (second-hand, I realize) of him at all.  His voice
is not "small," though it may be deceptive because it isn't pushed in its
production -- it has that same ease that makes Melchior sometimes sound
like a lyric tenor to record listeners.  It isn't "exquisite," though it
may have been so at some earlier stage of his career if he was coached
within an inch of his life.  I really consider him almost an amateur --
someone who was pushed into singing late in life because of an
exceptional vocal gift, but who almost entirely lacks the professional
skills of reliability, discipline, technique, and seriousness.  I heard
from members of the 1988 cast that he was enormously moving at the final
dress rehearsal (which is almost a full performance), then fell apart
for the first real performance and thereafter.  He certainly is no actor
at all.  (Read Stephen Fay's THE RING for descriptions of how he drove
Peter Hall and Georg Solti to distraction -- though they weren't
blameless in the matter, having chosen him.  They assigned someone
fulltime just to teach him to walk without looking ludicrous.)

Jon Alan Conrad
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical