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Great Singers in Mozart
Note by Dominic Fyfe |
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| The performance of Mozart opera in the first half of the nineteenth century barely gave the music a chance, to say nothing of the voices.
'I pity the singers, standing there all alone with their aria in front of the prompt box, and nothing around them but bare flats and an antique chair, or something of the sort, on which they are not even allowed to sit' - Richard Wagner reporting on Idomeneo at the Leipzig Court Theatre in 1829. In Paris Berlioz recorded in his Memoirs that, at worst, Mozart had become consumed by 'adapters' just as Shakespeare had been 'arranged' by Garrick and Cibber and Beethoven's Symphonies 'corrected' by Kreutzer and Habeneck. To ensure the success of The Magic Flute the director of the Paris Opera had commissioned a remarkable potpourri, a 'lamentable concoction' christened The Mysteries of Isis, opera. Among other 'vapid trivialities' the famous 'Fin ch'han del vino' from Don Giovanni duly reappeared as a trio for two sopranos and bass. But Berlioz recalls that, at best, Mozart had to contend with a greater prejudice: 'Don Giovanni and Figaro were the two Mozart operas most often done in Paris, but they were always done at the Italian Opera, by Italians, in Italian. Therefore they belonged to the Italian school, and were guilty by association. That was more than enough to make me feel somewhat unsympathetic towards these masterpieces.' The changes came with two great composer-conductors towards the end of the century and the beginning of our own: Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. Mahler, a conductor at the Vienna Court Opera from May 1897, became Artistic Director in October that year and at last Mozart succeeded on its own terms from the continuous presence of a vital creative intelligence. For the composer's 150th anniversary in 1906 Mahler presented five operas - including Mahler's Mozart has survived only in report, not on record, but it was clearly exceptional. 'Mahler was the ideal Mozart performer' writes the Austrian critic Erwin Stein. 'He was capable of the exceedingly subtle rubato that is implied in Mozart's melodies...There was always time for the music to sound and for the singer to sing.' In Don Giovanni and Figaro Mahler restored the secco recitatives which he accompanied himself on the piano and, later, on the harpsichord. Stage production too was at that time still the responsibility of the conductor - Otto Klemperer describes Mahler as the 'spiritus rector of the whole thing' - and he also trained his celebrated ensemble of 'Mahlersänger' in acting. Selma Kurz, Leo Slezak, Richard Mayr and the Bohemian-born bass Wilhelm Hesch exhibited Mahler's preference for strong, expressive voices of great power, capable of running the whole gamut of emotions in the whole repertoire. Hesch, heard here in his slightly cut and chorusless 1906 recording of Sarastro's first aria, made equally notable records of Der Freischütz, Fidelio, Figaro Elsewhere, in 1909, Ernestine Schumann-Heink, Bayreuth and the Metropolitan's fabled Erda, Fricka and Waltraute, recorded Sextus' 'Parto, parto' from La Clemenza di Tito with her identifiable power, opulence and agility, allied to dramatic temperament, all undimmed, uncompromised. Astonishingly, and despite a career founded largely outside the ensemble regularly commuting between Berlin and Vienna, hers was the voice for which Richard Strauss created the rôle of Klytemnestra in the premiere of Elektra At Mahler's invitation, and for an indisposed Karl Muck, Strauss conducted concerts in Salzburg in 1906 for the 150th anniversary. At that time Strauss was Director at the Berlin Hofoper Unter den Linden, a position he held for two decades from 1898, but it was earlier, as Kapellmeister at the rococo Residenztheater in Munich that his attention to Mozart became noticed. Klemperer recalls those evenings. 'They were enchanting. He accompanied the recitative himself on a harpsichord and made delightful little decorations. The continuity of Mahler's and Strauss' work - in short, the readmission of Mozart opera into the regular repertory in Berlin, Vienna and London - was assured, in part, by engaging conductors such as Clemens Krauss, Erich Kleiber, Karl Böhm and the young Herbert von Karajan as well as Mahler's assistants, Franz Schalk and Bruno Walter. Some of these men nurtured the revival through to the 200th anniversary of the composer's birth in 1956, but without the preservation of the pre-war vocal standard. Vocal technique was the practical method by which each singer accommodated Mozart into their predominantly nineteenth century repertoire. This record testifies to the extraordinary tradition in voice which had evolved before and through Mozart's time to absorb Verdi and Wagner and which now embraced Mozart again without any dislocation of style or technique. It was a method of voice production directly generated by the Italianate 'bel canto' tradition of continuous tone and unbroken line. In consequence, clear enunciation of the words was then possible without sacrificing tone, colour or legato and without disrupting the musical line. The French bass Marcel Journet illustrates this highly developed style of legato singing in his audaciously paced, liquidly delivered 'Catalogue aria.' And yet here is the singer engaged after the Great War by Toscanini for La Scala where he sang Hans Sachs, Mefistofele, Escamillo, Golaud and The Wanderer. But success in such an extensive repertoire was, in a sense, tantalisingly unexceptional; all the singers gathered in this volume demonstrate a talent and physical ability no more or no less appropriate in singing Mozart than in the variety of opera to date. The Hungarian-born, Berlin-based Friedrich Schorr explains: 'I do not see any difference in principle between Verdi's and Wagner's melodic style .....Wotan's Farewell should not be sung differently from Renato's aria in Un ballo in maschera '. Schorr's 'Serenade' proves the point that it was possible to bring drama and nobility to Mozart without paring-down the tone or the dignity of carriage which made him the great Sachs, Wotan and Dutchman of the day. Victor Gollancz recalls in his memoir 'Journey towards music' a supreme performance of Die Walküre in London in 1927 with Schorr and colleagues from the Berlin Staatsoper: Frida Leider as Brünnhilde and Lotte Lehmann as Sieglinde. A cast of splendour which, he contended, was equal to the best Bayreuth days with Schumann-Heink and Lili Lehmann. In the same year Lotte Lehmann recorded in Berlin in German her 'Porgi amor' of exemplary breadth and contour. Hers was the voice Neville Cardus pronounced of 'perfect kind' in records of Die Walküre with Melchior, and a Marschallin 'beautiful for now and for the years to come', both made in Vienna with Staatsoper forces between 1933 and 1935. In performance she was Vienna's first Turandot with Leo Slezak as Calaf (1926) and season by season she appeared as Desdemona, Tosca, Mimì, Butterfly, Marguerite in Faust as well as Pamina, Donna Elvira and the Figaro Countess. Similarly, Frida Leider, Berlin's dramatic soprano between the wars, would impart an equal intensity and sense of outrage to her Isolde and Brünnhilde as she brought to her Donna Anna. Her Verdi was remarkable too; as Leonora (Il Trovatore) she made famous recordings, some with the young Heinrich Schlusnus, which possess an utterly characteristic attention to situation, strong tone and musical accuracy. Fast, firm and accurate, the three soubrette or coloratura sopranos in this anthology - Schoene, Ivogün and Supervia - demonstrate that stylish Mozart was a fabulous consequence of a coloratura tradition and technique begun with Baroque opera in the 17th century, and as dazzlingly at home in Richard Strauss as much as Mozart or Rossini, and in Berlin and Vienna as much as La Scala, where Supervia sang Isabella, Angelina and Rosina in their original keys. When we arrive at Beecham and the all-embracing point and pace of the 1937 Berlin Zauberflöte, complete opera recordings in general and Mozart's in particular were far from unfamiliar; in the early 1930's Fred Gaisberg brought the Fritz Busch Glyndebourne Da Ponte operas into the studio admirably rehearsed and recorded quickly and cheaply in a few sessions. But for Mozart's greatest German opera the producer Walter Legge wanted an all-German cast with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Beecham. And in Helge Roswaenge,Tiana Lemnitz, Erna Berger and, heard here, Gerhard Hüsch, it brings together an integrated musical and vocal apotheosis of the two celebrated Staatsoper ensembles. Well, perhaps not quite. 'We have only Hitler to thank for the other changes,' wrote Legge. 'Kipnis, my first choice for Sarastro, and Richard Tauber, for Tamino, were both Jewish and could not be expected to expose themselves to the evident dangers.' Over half a century later, the compact disc affords us the chance to eavesdrop on that Mozartian ideal. |
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