Wagner: Tannhauser.(opera)(Opera Review)

WAGNER: Tannhauser

Brouwenstijn, Wilfert; Windgassen, Fischer-Dieskau, Greindl, Traxel, Blankenheim, Stolze, Herwig, Horn; chorus and orchestra of the Bayreuth Festival (August 9, 1955), Schonberger Sangerknaben, Cluytens. Notes, synopsis, no text. Orfeo C643 043D (mono)

Once upon a time, about fifty years ago, Bayreuth was a wondrous mecca. The world's leading singers came, rehearsed and stayed. They even accepted small parts. The world's leading conductors regarded an engagement as the crowning glory of an opera career. As long as Wieland Wagner held sway, fearless and iconoclastic, the festival in his grandfather's hometown proved that the music-dramas needed neither hoary tradition nor gimmicky modernism to make sense.

This Tannhauser, souvenir of a broadcast in 1955, fails to document perfection. It's easy to note technical flaws, in matters of vocalism and in matters of recording. The blemishes seem unimportant, however, in context. In those days, we had Faces. Even the chorus projected character. There's an aura of excitement and rediscovery here. Much of it is traceable no doubt to Wieland's quasi-abstract delineation of the plot, and, more important, to the psychological motives behind it. Then there's the sympathetic conducting of Andre Cluytens. Though born in Belgium, he was heralded as the first French maestro in this Germanic paradise. He dares to move very slowly in moments of introspection, very quickly in passages of agitation. At both ...