Reviews for CD2001 Parsifal

MusicWeb - January 2002

Richard WAGNER
Parsifal - Act 2 (complete) and finale Act 3
Sung in German

Act 2 (Complete)

Act 3 (Finale):

Parsifal - Lauritz Melchior (tenor)
Amfortas - Herbert Janssen (baritone)

GUILD HISTORICAL 2201 [76.21]

Guild Music has an association with Immortal Performances which has an archive of first-generation historic broadcasts from the 1930s and 1940s. This initial release (the others are a complete 1943 Figaro, excerpts from a 1928 Boris Godunov with Chaliapin, and a complete Siegfried from 1937) sets a standard hard to beat. All the discs are transfers from the original transcription discs master tapes, and transcripts of the complete Toscanini broadcasts from the same period are also planned. So too is a complete and mouth-wateringly cast Ring from the Met.

The current Guild series whose discs listed above I have also reviewed on this site, offers up its fourth treasure, a complete second act of Parsifal, with a filler provided by the last fifteen minutes of the opera with Herbert Janssen partnering Melchior. Considering that there were 21 performances of this opera at the Met between 1942 and 1947 (three or four each year) it was both a surprise and a scandal to learn that none was broadcast. Melchior was a supreme Parsifal, ‘Amfortas! Die Wunde’ (track 9) confirms that, while Kundry was nothing short of sublime in her phrasing, with a kaleidoscopic variety of drama and vocal colour being at the core of her interpretation.

The wonderful discovery of this recording on sixteen 12" aluminium discs in cartons stored in a basement and, above all, the loving care taken by Richard Caniell and his team patching it all together means that we can enjoy this miracle casting despite its occasional glitches, clumsy joins, and variable quality. The timbre of Melchior’s voice rises electrifyingly above such technical problems to produce moments of radiance. The complex nature of the roles of Parsifal and Kundry, how the former transforms from a youth of naïve purity to the anguish brought about by the experience of Amfortas’s wound, and how the latter is at one time a maternal figure, then an alluring seductress, and finally shamefully acknowledging her failure to corrupt Parsifal, all of which both Melchior and Flagstad respectively master while clearly at the height of their vocal powers, results in a memorable souvenir of a golden age.

Christopher Fifield

WAGNER NOTES

By JOE PEARCE
President of the N.Y. Vocal Record Collectors Society
Music critic, Opera Quarterly
(Re-printed by permission from the Wagner Society of New York)

Parsifal: Act II (Complete)

Metropolitan Opera, R. Wagner. Principals: Lauritz Melchior (Parsifal), Kirsten Flagstad (Kundry), Arnold Gabor (Klingsor), Susanne Fisher, Irra Petina, Helen Olheim, Hilda Burke, Thelma Votipka, Doris Doe (Flower Maidens); Erich Leinsdorf, conductor. Performance of April 15, 1938.

Parsifal: Act III Finale

Principals: Lauritz Melchior (Parsifal), Herbert Janssen (Amfortas) (1 CD) Guild GHCD 2201. (provenance/date uncertain).

More highly interesting stuff here from Richard Caniell and the Immortal Performances Recorded Music Society. This hardly requires the detailed analysis of his recent Lohengrin issue, but it is important for various reasons, not the least of which is that this is the only broadcast record of Flagstad's Kundry, a role she sang at the Met almost two dozen times but which, despite a famous 1940 Victor recording of the Act II Parsifal-Kundry duet under Edwin McArthur's direction, is one not nearly as associated with her as are Isolde, the three Brünnhildes, Elsa, and Elisabeth. This is hardly surprising, as Kundry is usually considered an ideal role for a great "singing actress," and Flagstad is never remembered as such. And this constitutes perhaps the main reason for acquiring this disc, to be able to compare the "stage" Flagstad in this scene to her own Victor counterpart of two years later. Somehow, you just know that Melchior will excel his commercial recording where dramatics are concerned (he always does; just listen to any of his in-person Rome Narrations). And it certainly doesn't hurt to have these two singers performing under the baton of Erich Leinsdorf, who was to Edwin McArthur as Spencer Tracy was to Tab Hunter.

Actually, this performance is perhaps unique in that Leinsdorf conducts only Act II, the first and third acts being conducted by Artur Bodanzky (was there ever another incident in Met history in which a conductor took on a middle act of an opera in order to give the primary stick-waver a rest?). The full performance had been available in execrable sound since the late 1960s on a pirate label, and more recently (in exactly the same execrable sound) on CD on the Myto label, but Mr. Caniell has come across a separate recording of Act II only, in far better sound than was heretofore available, and this is the reason that only the second act is being issued by Guild at this time.

As might be expected of aluminum discs from 1938, they are not without their share of surface noise, but efforts have been successful to keep this to a minimum, and once one gets used to the recording ambience, they fade into minor significance, especially in view of the overall superior sonics of the recording, which capture the singers and orchestra superbly for 1938. The producer admits to having had to patch in a word or chord here and there from the commercial recording as the original copying process dropped a note or two at the beginning and/or end of several sides; the "joins" have not been uniformly perfect, but listening on headphones I found them barely perceptible. Anyhow, as far as sonics go, after seven decades these are unlikely to be bettered, and it should be quite easy for lovers of vocal art to live with what is heard here.

To the singers (in ascending order of importance): Mr. Caniell names only the three leads for this act, leaving the identity of those lovely temptresses known as the Flower Maidens to the more industriously-inclined among CD purchasers. I was so inclined, and they are identified in the above heading. Mr. Caniell was right! The Head Flower Maiden (I assume her to be Susanne Fisher, but that could be an actionable libel) has considerable trouble locating the proper pitch up in the stratosphere; this does nothing at all to help Klingsor's other contractees, as the Head Flower Maiden is the one who always permeates the ensemble in most listeners' aural perceptions. Still, no one will be buying this to hear the Flower Maidens, so as far as I am concerned, they can sing any way they like. And they do!

A really pleasant surprise was provided by Arnold Gabor, our Klingsor. I find him even better than does Mr. Caniell (who likes him, but expresses surprise that he would have been cast in such an important role). Gabor was a leading baritone in both Hungary and Germany and left a number of quite excellent acoustic recordings. He was important enough to have created Amfortas in the first-ever performances of Parsifal in Hungary in 1914 (the year in which the opera finally found release from its Bayreuth monopoly). However, perhaps for security reasons, in his mid-40s he seems to have settled into a long and honorable comprimario career at the Met, only rarely singing even a semi-important role there. What we hear in 1938, when Gabor was 58 and nearing the end of his singing days, is a rock-solid baritone voice with (as can scarcely be said of most leading baritones of today) no holes in it. It is even, mellifluous, and without tonal lapses throughout its range. In fact, when listening to him here, I was rather astounded that he accepted comprimario status and, for that matter, that the Met let him do so. If he was singing this way at 58, what did he sound like when he arrived at the Old Brick Brewery in 1923? In addition to his singing, he creates a vividly nasty fellow. (You'd be nasty, too, if you had Klingsor's problems.) A capital performance!

It is almost superfluous to even bother covering Melchior's performance here. He is, as has been no other tenor of his time, or our own, the perfect embodiment of Parsifal. The voice is nothing short of glorious throughout; he is dramatically alive at all times, and his musicianship is extraordinary. It is enough to make one want to take up arms against all those morons (sorry, I mean critics) who simply couldn't embrace such greatness without caveats, even if they had to make most of them up. The Victor recording of the Parsifal-Kundry duet has only its sonics going for it; in every other way, Melchior seems superior here. I say "seems" because he is one of those sovereign artists who always "seems" to be operating at a level never again achievable, even by himself, so that you are almost always convinced that what you're hearing now is the best he or anyone else will ever do - an opinion to cherish until you hear him in another performance of that same piece a week later, when that old opinion is usually transferred to the current performance being audited. Amazing!

And now, Flagstad as Kundry. Well, Mr. Caniell goes into something close to ecstasy on her in this role. I agree with him, but only to a certain extent. She is superb throughout, her voice simply so superior to anyone else's in this music that it rather obviates the necessity for comparison with such lesser beings in that regard. And she does find much meaning in the text that seems to elude her, even more than two years later, in the recording studio. It is a surprisingly satisfying performance from a soprano who has rarely been accorded prime status as an interpreter. When reviewing her Brünnhilde in Mr. Caniell's "DREAM RING" a while back, I stated that despite her general reputation for voice over drama that has come down to us over the years (like Melchior in a skirt!), she was always a totally committed performer in the stage performances we have heard, and nowhere is she more so than in this performance. Total dramatic commitment, however, is not always enough. One thinks of any number of totally committed Neddas and Santuzzas, but their total commitment alone does not make these singers into the equal of a Teresa Stratas or a Giulietta Simionato in those roles, no matter how sincere their intentions and how great their voices. Something else is needed, and that something else is what I still find lacking in Flagstad to make her "the greatest exponent of the role" that Mr. Caniell claims her to be. There is a certain wildness, craftiness, and even pathos in Kundry's character that Flagstad, despite her total commitment, cannot capture vocally or histrionically (and which I am sure she did not capture physically), almost certainly because these are qualities that are not in her basic private and/or artistic makeup (which encompassed exactly the right qualities to make her the great Isolde, Brünnhilde, and Leonore in Fidelio that she was).

Range aside (and they are not dissimilar), I would think that a great Kundry should also make a great Ortrud. Can anyone seriously imagine Flagstad as a convincing Ortrud? So, while I can agree that Flagstad, as heard here, is a great exponent of the role, I cannot bring myself to hear her as the "greatest" exponent of the role; at least, not while visions of Martha Modl, Astrid Varnay, and Leonie Rysanek dance in my head. And who would want to choose between them? Let's just be happy that Flagstad could be so much more of a dramatic stage performer than her reputation and recordings might indicate was possible. I mean, how bad an epitaph would it be to be called one of the great Kundrys?

This CD's filler is made up of the final 14 minutes of the opera, commencing just prior to "Mein Vater!," with Herbert Janssen as a moving Amfortas, and with a hardly noticeable splice-in of Melchior's Victor recording of "Nur eine Waffe taugt," all of this "offered as a memorial to Lauritz Melchior's final performance of Parsifal which he sang at the Met on March 23, 1948 with Janssen." As such, it is both appropriate and very nice to have, but it remains unclear where the non-Melchior portion of the track emanates from. Happily, we will learn more about this in time, as the Guild is planning a full CD devoted to the art of Herbert Janssen, with a bit more of this performance in it.

Mr. Caniell's notes for the set are a bit less copious than for the others reviewed so far, being confined more to the performers' assumptions of the roles, general biographical information on the participants, and interesting notes on the provenance of the recordings, than to the more cogitative explorations of characters and motivations that are usually so delightful to read, but what is printed here is very interesting, and the opinions expressed are more than just interesting (to say the least).

This CD will be self-recommending to all Wagnerites who have a real interest in Wagnerian vocalism and interpretation of a bygone era. If your interest is more general in that regard, and you already have the 1940 commercial recording of the great duet that is the centerpiece of Act II of Parsifal , you may be able to do without this latest addition to our cumulative knowledge of Wagnerian performance practice, but you certainly should have one or the other, and this new CD would be the better choice. Recommended.

Joe Pearce

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Classics Today – March 2002

As Guild's excellent program notes accurately explain, the Good Friday April 15, 1938 Metropolitan Opera broadcast performance of Wagner's Parsifal has been known to vocal connoisseurs by way of a hideous-sounding, virtually unlistenable aircheck. The acetate source used for the present release proves a zillion times better, but a sonic bed of roses it ain't. If you've heard the Artur Bodanzky Das Rheingold and Götterdammerung Met releases on Naxos, you'll know what to expect. More to the musical point, though, this recording preserves Kirsten Flagstad's Kundry in its most vocally pristine and emotionally three-dimensional incarnation. Those familiar with the soprano's statuesque studio versions of "Ich sah das Kind", for instance, will notice her more lilting, conversational manner, which continues up through the pivotal kiss.

Here Lauritz Melchior's suave, ringing timbre opens up, and from "Amfortas, die wunde!" onward the drama comes utterly alive. Flagstad, in turn, responds to her partner with equal urgency and excitement. Arnold Gabor's Klingsor sounds ordinary in comparison, but the baritone is thoroughly into the role and sings with focused authority. It's just as well that the matronly, hooty Flowermaidens aren't identified. Erich Leinsdorf elicits top notch, dramatically alert playing from what you can hear of the Met Orchestra. To fill out the disc, Guild includes two-thirds of an "Opera House of our Dreams" broadcast featuring Parsifal's Third Act Finale with Melchior and Herbert Janssen as Amfortas. Grungy sound notwithstanding, all Melchior/Flagstad devotees should hear this release.

Jed Distler

MusicWeb - January 2002

Wagner staging at the Met. in the 1930s and 1940s was a golden age, not known before, or equalled since. More by circumstance than design many of these performances were broadcast by NBC in their Saturday afternoon series and some were preserved. Influenced by circumstances in Germany the greatest Wagner singers had migrated to the Met. where memorable performances were the order of the day. The presence of Melchior and Flagstad made the performances of Parsifal vocally magnificent, particularly when Janssen or Schorr were also singing. Regrettably none of those performances were broadcast and nothing other than the written record remains. However, this one performance was broadcast and pirate LPs were later issued on the EJS label, albeit in barely listenable sound. Richard Caniell, the progenitor of this series, and a researcher of the Met. broadcasts, discovered metal masters professionally made for an enthusiast of Flagstad; it is from these masters that the complete Act 2 is taken. The CD is filled with 14 minutes of the finale of Act 3 taken from a later "Opera House of our Dreams Series" recording.

Perhaps the most important thing to say of this very welcome issue is how easy on the ear it is. So as not to compromise the overtones of voices and orchestra, it is the policy of the series not to remove clicks etc. There are stage noises, clicks, and some hiss; a plea of guilty is made for some clumsy joints where a few orchestral notes were missing at the end of sides. The orchestral sound is very solid and the voices well forward.

Flagstad (b 1895) came to the Met for the 1934-1935 season and within 2 years she and Melchior were the biggest box office draw the theatre had known since the days of Caruso and Toscanini. She is heard in noble voice here; perfect in pitch and diction she soars over the orchestra and brings Kundry to life. She is matched in every respect by Melchior's strong full heldentenor, they rise up the stave to climaxes without any perceivable strain or distortion of the tone –they don't seem to make them like this any more! Gabor, one of the better comprimario baritones at the Met. (he sang 18 seasons giving 804 performances of 60 roles) doesn't let the side down in his Act 2 contribution. Leinsdorf, 26 years of age, who had already been Bruno Walter's assistant at the Salzburg and Florence festivals, had made his Met debut the previous January in Die Walküre to critical acclaim. His conducting here has great power and dramatic intensity. Performances such as this doubtless contributed to his appointment as chief conductor of the German repertoire in 1940.

Such performances as Parsifal are legendary and given the quality of the recording, in its own right not merely in comparison with the EJS or Myto transcriptions, Wagnerians will want this issue in their collection.

Robert J Farr