From: rwilmer@carrier.mitre.org (R. Wilmer)
Subject: Re: Various _Goetterdaemmerung_s 
Keywords: Janowski, Karajan, Solti
Organization: Mitre Corporation, McLean, VA
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 19:22:18 GMT

In article <Bz3tMv.HF9@news.udel.edu> conrad@brahms.udel.edu (Jon Conrad) writes:
>In article <1992Dec10.155514.3888@osf.org> coren@speed.osf.org (Robert Coren) writes:
>
>>Act II: Karajan. I confess to having loaded the dice here a bit, in
>>choosing what I expected (accurately, as it happens) to be my least
>>favorite of the three recordings for my least favorite of the three
>>acts. 
>
>Really?  You don't like this act?  To each his own, I guess, but I find
>this one of my favorite Wagner acts -- tight, insightful, dramatic.

I think it is sensational.  My single favorite Wagner act.  The only
thing I criticize in Gotterdammerung is Act I.  To me it is a bunch
of great scenes that don't quite hang together.  I find it a lopsided,
overlong, and unfocused act.  I do find each scene quite wonderful:
the Norns, the love duet, Siegfried's Rhine Journey, the plotting
Gibichungs, Hagen's watch music, Waltraute's great
narrative, and the rape of Brunnhilde.
But when I see this act in the theater (I've been to productions
of the Met, Bayreuth, and Berlin), Waltraute's splendid music (for instance)
doesn't do as much for me in the opera as when I come to it fresh.  I think
the Act is fine through the Rhine journey, but starts to
run out of steam in the Gibichung scene.  Again I think that
scene is fine on its own but does not balance well with the preceding
duet and Rhine journey.

In any case, the wham bang ending after Gunther drags off Brunnhilde
gives my overloaded, woozy mind a jolt before I reel off into the intermission.
One reason that I think the second act is so great is that it
whips my mind back into focus no matter how weary I got
during the first Act. I am always riveted by Act II (``tight, insightful,
dramatic'' just as Jon says), and I am inspired
to take on Act III. I leave the theater thrilled. (By that time
it seems that the longeurs of Act I happened on some other day).

>
>>but no performance of
>>this opera is going to stand or fall on its Gunther anyway. Gundula
>>Janowitz is a fine Gutrune, but the above goes double for Gutrune.
>
>Gee, and I find Janowitz as wimpy a Gutrune as any recording has --
>barely audible, totally uncharacterized, and a real disappointment after
>her freshly imagined Sieglinde for HvK.  But you're right, these roles
>won't sink or save any performance.

When I saw the Berlin production I thought Lenus Carlson and Karan
Armstrong in those two parts really did save the performance.  Unlike
my usual experience of Act I (described above), the show came to life when
the scene opened on Gunther and Gutrune's decadent lifestyle, especially
with Gotz Friedrich's interesting incestual implications.  The
love duet had been disappointing with Jesus Something-something's
conducting loose, Kollo uninvolved, and Ute
Vinzing's voice dry, unsteady, and tired.  Carlson's Gunther
also held the show together in Act II.

>> it's practically impossible to produce truly
>>beautiful sounds with the power that's required for these roles.
>
>You've really got to hear some of the older Wagnerians before you say
>this last, Robert.  (I'm assuming you haven't, from your recent
>statement that you've got to find some Melchior sometime.)  Melchior,
>Flagstad, Leider, Traubel, Austral -- they all managed it.
>
>>Nilsson certainly has the power for Bruennhilde, and she knows what
>>she's doing. I do not find her singing beautiful, however; the voice
>>annoys me in ways that I find difficult to describe. 
>
>And I'm wondering if my ear is faulty in some fundamental way, because I
>don't hear Nilsson as off-pitch in any way here.  She has certainly made
>recordings (mostly late in her career) where pitch was a problem, but to
>my ears this is not one of them.  I also find the ease and focus and
>clarity of her voice beautiful in a very complete way, but I concede
>that this is a personal matter.

I admire Nilsson's voice too.  For sheer vocal beauty, I like
the recordings of the second-act Tristan duets with Melchior and
Leider and with Flagstad and Suthaus; also the end of Walkure
with Leider and Schorr.

>>the appearance in the trumpet of the most poignant of the "Waelsung"
>>themes during the Funeral March (at the point where Wagner directs
>>that the moon should come out and illuminate the river);
>
>Tears me apart every time.  I also must report on the staging of this
>moment in the most recent staging at Bayreuth (by Harry Kupfer, soon to
>appear on film).  Many of us found it the highly of the show, which I
>suppose may stand as an adverse commentary on the rest since it is
>entirely unscripted and unauthorized, and introduces Wotan onstage when
>he isn't supposed to be in this opera at all.  Anyway: Instead of
>carrying Siegfried off, everyone left him alone onstage, and the ground
>under his body sank lower and lower, creating canyon-like cleft across
>the stage from side to side (this had appeared earlier in the cycle
>too).  On one side appeared Bruennhilde, looking down at her dead
>husband; on the other, Wotan, looking down at his dead grandson.  Then
>daughter and father looked at each other, at just about this measure,
>and all the reverberations of the hopes of both, coming finally to
>nothing, were extremely moving.  It may not be a "legitimate"
>interpretation by some standards, but it was a great moment of
>drama-uniting-with-music in the theater.

I, too, thought that effect was fine and moving.  At Bayreuth, a teenage
girl (Spanish I think) sitting on my left was overwhelmed,
sobbing loudly, at that point.  I was not, however, impressed later
in the act by the ending with all the kids watching television to the
soaring immolation music.  Kupfer may be right that watching television
is a good symbol of the decline and fall of modern man (our own
``daemmerung''), but I did not think it was an image that went well with
Wagner's music.  What did you think, Jon?

Richard

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