Lauritz Melchior: the Golden Years of Bayreuth.(Book Review)(Brief Article)

by Ib Melchior Baskerville Publishers, 273 pp. $50

For any lover of Wagner's music-drama, Lauritz Melchior retains near-mythic status. Few of us who heard him during his unchallenged reign as the world's greatest heldentenor will forget the ease with which that voice trumpeted triumphantly over the most boisterous orchestration.

After beginning as a baritone, he ascended to stardom, securing that position during several seasons at Bayreuth (1924-31). Those "Golden Years" of the festival, then under the direction of Siegfried Wagner, are memorialized by Melchior's son Ib, a film producer, in this glimpse of opera history. Informatively indexed and impressively printed on glossy stock, near coffee-table size, it is a handsome complement to the full biographies on the market. The attractive package includes a lovingly remastered CD of Melchior's Wagner performances from that period, along with such artists as Friedrich Schorr and Frida Leider, and even one competitor (Gotthelf Pistor: no contest!). These recordings confirm that even in an era of great Wagner singing, the tenor's vocal gifts transcended those of his colleagues; only a few lower voices (such as that of Alexander Kipnis) posed any ...