Siegfried (Goodall Ring Cycle/Chandos Opera in English)
This set is a triumph, even more than Chandos's recording of The Valkyrie (reviewed on page 121 of the November issue). Its most immediately appealing aspect, and one which I am inclined to feel has, even now, not been celebrated enough, is the singing and interpretation of Alberto Remedios in the title role. While he was active on the English stage he was regarded as a delightful presence, an attractive, musical singer, but nothing very special. Listening to his Siegfried again after about a decade, I was led to wonder how such damning with faint praise could have been possible. He doesn't exactly have a heroic tenor voice, but almost no one since Melchior has; Remedios is certainly as powerful as Windgassen, the most celebrated post-war heroic tenor, and he needed, at any rate when this recording was made, and for several years afterwards, to husband it much less than Windgassen, even in his prime. There is no sense that he is holding back during the immensely leisurely Forging Song; indeed, he sails over the orchestra with swaggering ease, and is almost never drowned anywhere in the work. If his voice doesn't suggest the sheer physical power that goes with Siegfried's heroic achievements, that is a small price to pay for the intense lyric quality, the poetic depth and the spontaneous charm which he brings to the part. If more Siegfrieds sang the role like this it might get a less hostile, more intelligent press. He is genuinely eager to find out about his parents from Mime, and his impatience with the dwarf's evasiveness seems reasonable, granted that he has had to put up with him, and therefore with it, for so many years. His exuberance is that of a frustrated adolescent, and when he finds that he can reforge his father's sword, the determination to channel his energies into something he finds worth doing is most attractive, as well as moving. Throughout the whole long act Remedios sings with scrupulous accuracy, makes the most of Andrew Porter's superb translation, and pulls out all the stops for a thrilling climax as the sword is finally forged. If one still has his interpretation of Siegmund in one's head, the contrast between the shared ecstasy at the end of Act 1 of The Valkyrie and the lonely joy of Siegfried, with the malevolent counterpoint of Mime, adds a further dimension of feeling. Gregory Dempsey is a ‘Mime who manages to whine' musically, quite without the fatiguing effect of Stolze and his ilk, and a character whose extreme unpleasantness doesn't mean that he is an ordeal for the listener. He conveys, too, what torment life is for this pitiful but loathsome creature. And, most striking of all, during the long passage in Act 2 when he tries to get Siegfried to drink the poisonous potion he has brewed for him, he varies his tone without lapsing into parody and keeps things moving along, so that what is potentially the least interesting section of the Ring is here riveting. His brother Alberich is perhaps the weak link in the cast: Derek Hammond-Stroud is exemplary in enunciation, has the right interpretative instincts, but a voice which is too small and too meagre in tone to convey the grandeur and menace of The Ring's agonized anti-hero. Alberich, after all, wins the argument with the Wanderer, but Norman Bailey's sonorous, enormously imposing singing of that grateful part leaves Alberich sounding nothing more than a peevish wimp. Bailey doesn't rely merely on the richness of his voice, though: he makes the most of the genial irony of his role, and in the climactic scene with Erda (intensely sung by Anne Collins) rises to great heights of pathos and visionary splendour. It's easy for Brünnhilde to make an effect after what, in this reading, is a full four hours of male-dominated music. Rita Hunter is just as concerned to work her way through Brünnhilde's pain at the prospect of becoming a mere woman as to greet the sun, light and day, and is also careful not to upstage Remedios, who briefly shows signs of tiring at the beginning of their scene, before getting his nth wind, and co-operating fully in sweeping things to their exultant conclusion. All these artists collaborate to the greater glory of the work, and in this drama in particular they are guided by the almost infallible hand of Goodall, who misses no trick. Only the great Prelude to Act 3 lacks something in elemental surge. Otherwise the score is treated with an understanding and love which makes it come more continuously alive than perhaps I have ever heard it. Even for people who, understandably, shrink from the thought of The Ring on disc in English, this is a quite special set, far too exciting and full of fresh perceptions to remain unpurchased.Michael Tanner--From International Record Review - subscribe now