Goodall's 1971 Covent Garden Parsifal to be released
Bert Coules
http://www.mdt.co.uk/MDTSite/product/ROHS012.htm
...the Royal Opera House Heritage label is to release the 8th May 1971
Goodall Parsifal, with Jon Vickers in the title role, Amy Shuard as Kundry,
Norman Bailey as Amfortas, Donald McIntyre as Klingsor, Louis Hendrikx as
Gurnemanz, Michael Langdon as Titurel, and Kiri Te Kanawa as the First
Flower Maiden.
The release date is 29th November.
Excellent news.
Bert
@isp.studenten.net Herman van der Woude
Some news, Bert! This is something worth waiting for, I suppose. Being
it a production of the Royal Opera House, I presume that this one was
not sung in English, but in German. I have an EMI release of the same
opera under Goodall's conducting from the Welsh National Opera with
McIntyre as Gurnemanz (to name an example), recorded in June 1984. This
recording is one of my favorites.
Bert, please keep us posted!
Cheers,
--
Met vriendelijke groet,
Herman van der Woude
Bert Coules
enlightened enough to perform their foreign-language operas in English.
I saw at least one of that run of performances; I might be in the audience
on the CDs. I remember it as a fine show, and though Amy Shuard used to
come in for some rather snidy stick from the smart set in the audience, I
recall her Kundry as being perfectly OK.
Bert
Bert Coules
Radio3 message boards, that the run had back luck and there were several
Gurnemanzes, presumably most of them going on with little rehearsal. The R3
poster says that Hendrikx wasn't particularly interesting, but these things
are a mater of taste, of course.
Bert
Mike Scott Rohan
from "Bert Coules" <ma...@bertcoules.co.uk> contains these words:
> Bert
Wasn't it that run when Frick came out of retirement to sing G. for some
performances? And I'm sure that one was broadcast -- I remember some
friends and I gathering to listen to it at college, among a haze of beer
and smoke. I didn't know Parsifal so well then, but it was pretty
memorable, though distinctly slow.
Hendrickx I saw a number of times, the first as Fafner and Hagen for
Scottish Opera; he's also Fafner on the Karajan Rheingold film. Huge
dark voice, could definitely act, but I think something less reflective
and more active like Hagen suited him better than Gurnemanz would.
Suspect he'd be splendidly sonorous but not varied or passionate enough.
Cheers,
Mike
Bert Coules
> Wasn't it that run when Frick came out of retirement to sing G. for some
> performances? And I'm sure that one was broadcast...
I'm not sure. I'm pretty certain that I have an off-air reel-to-reel
recording of the Beeb relay lying in the hoarde somewhere, and surely I'd
remember if it featured Frick, a singer I knew well then from the Solti Ring
but have never seen live.
Having said that, I can't now remember who is on the tape, or who played the
part on the night I was actually there.
I do remember how good "my" performance was, and one detail of the staging
has stuck in my mind: this (rather old-fashioned) production's solution to
the flying spear problem was quite a simple one: Parsifal (who fortuitously
was wearing a full-length cloak at the time) positioned himself very
carefully downstage (left, I think) facing Klingsor who was upstage centre.
Klingsor held the spear aloft, in the manner of a javelin thrower, made one
or two "getting-ready" moves to and fro, and then niftily threw the weapon
backwards (where it was presumably fielded by a nervous stage hand).
Parsifal meanwhile had spread wide his cloak to hide the fact that a
duplicate spear was being passed up to him through a small square trap,
rather in the manner of the vocalists' microphones at Sunday Night at the
London Palladium. A flash of light, a momentary darkness, one spear chucked
backwards and another hastily hoisted - Da-da! That's how it worked, and
well well, on the previous revival.
Unfortunately, on my night (which might have been the first night, come to
think of it) Vickers planted himself some four feet to the side of the trap,
which necessitated some rather urgent sideways-shuffling, as the tip of a
strange spear started to appear from the bowels of the earth.
Didn't matter a bit, such was the power of the performance; and I very much
doubt if Goodall noticed at all...
Bert
Mike Scott Rohan
from "Bert Coules" <ma...@bertcoules.co.uk> contains these words:
> Mike Scott Rohan wrote:
> Bert
I remember the moment from that CG production (I think) the following
year with Shuard, Brilioth, Bailey, MacIntyre/Nimsgern and Talvela (with
Te Kanawa as Flower Maiden 1), Jascha Horenstein conducting -- his last;
he collapsed after the performance. I thought the spear came down from
above, but I may very well have been deceived, or they may have decided
to try it differently. Perhaps some hapless tenor stood *over* the trap,
and inherited Amfortas' little problem....
Cheers,
Mike
Bert Coules
> I thought the spear came down from
> above, but I may very well have been deceived...
Would you trust any tenor - or any other opera singer, come to that - to
catch a potentially deadly weapon dropped from on high? There are some whom
one might perhaps delight in placing under such a threat, but perhaps not if
the success of the show depends on it.
> Perhaps some hapless tenor stood *over* the trap,
> and inherited Amfortas' little problem....
Well, it was around the time of the beginning of the counter-tenor boom, so
it's an ill spear...
I didn't know Brilioth had played Parsifal at the Garden. I saw him as
Siegfried and was impressed: not a huge voice but intelligent and
convincing; I suspect he was rather good as the pure fool. Isn't he the
Siegfried on the Karajan studio Götterdämmerung?
A correspondent on the Radio 3 message board posted that Frick came in and
saved the first night, to such acclaim that he almost accepted the immediate
offer to do the whole run. Sadly (because it would have meant that I could
have seen him, which I never did in any role) he decided against it.
Bert
Mike Scott Rohan
from "Bert Coules" <ma...@bertcoules.co.uk> contains these words:
> Mike Scott Rohan wrote:
> > I thought the spear came down from
> > above, but I may very well have been deceived...
> Would you trust any tenor - or any other opera singer, come to that - to
> catch a potentially deadly weapon dropped from on high? There are
> some whom
> one might perhaps delight in placing under such a threat, but perhaps
> not if
> the success of the show depends on it.
Didn't come down vertically, as far as I could see, but laterally, on
some kind of wire. Impression enhanced because it seemed to be swinging
slightly from side to side as he grasped it. Come to think of it, he
wasn't wearing a cloak, so couldn't have concealed it. But, as I say,
could have been mistaken.
> > Perhaps some hapless tenor stood *over* the trap,
> > and inherited Amfortas' little problem....
> Well, it was around the time of the beginning of the counter-tenor boom, so
> it's an ill spear...
> I didn't know Brilioth had played Parsifal at the Garden. I saw him as
> Siegfried and was impressed: not a huge voice but intelligent and
> convincing; I suspect he was rather good as the pure fool. Isn't he the
> Siegfried on the Karajan studio Götterdämmerung?
Yes, and I prefer him to Thomas in Siegfried. Not a huge voice indeed,
but notably clear and, as you say, intelligent; also when I saw him, a
very credible stage figure -- looked boyish next to Talvela, of course,
but who wouldn't? He was indeed good as Parsifal, although of course
back then I hadn't seen many others to compare; but I preferred him to
Windgassen on his first recording, which was all I had then. I'd heard
Vickers on the radio, of course, but his was a different level of
performance, much more epic -- but found him harder to believe in.
Incidentally, on the train back to Oxford next day I found myself
reading Melchior's obit in the paper, which had me thinking about the
few heldentenors I had heard by then.
> A correspondent on the Radio 3 message board posted that Frick came in and
> saved the first night, to such acclaim that he almost accepted the
> immediate
> offer to do the whole run. Sadly (because it would have meant that I could
> have seen him, which I never did in any role) he decided against it.
He retired while still very much in his strength, but I suspect he
didn't want to stay away from home that long. He was actually not that
impressive on stage, from the little I saw -- a shortish, leathery man;
the charisma was in that extraordinary voice. He's Caspar on the
Bavarian film of Freischutz with Ernst Kozub, recently on DVD -- but
ouch. Voice splendid, but performance one hundred per cent Black Forest
ham. Mind you, the same thing happened to Neidlinger -- also reputedly a
magnificent actor -- in Bohm's Fidelio film -- a performance like a bad
Bela Lugosi imitator. Maybe it was the director's fault.
Cheers,
Mike
Bert Coules
I know (only too well) from my own experience that a performer who impresses
mightily when seen doesn't always cast the same magic when only heard. And,
sadly for a good few opera singers, the reverse is also true.
Of course Frick's lack of height wouldn't have mattered as Hagen, assuming
that he took after his father...
Bert
Mike Scott Rohan
from "Bert Coules" <ma...@bertcoules.co.uk> contains these words:
> Mike,
> I know (only too well) from my own experience that a performer who
> impresses
> mightily when seen doesn't always cast the same magic when only heard.
> And,
> sadly for a good few opera singers, the reverse is also true.
> Bert
Yes indeed. There is such a thing as a microphone voice, and, as Culshaw
points out, there are singers who can use the mike and some who can't. I
think the recent advances in live recording tend to even the
playing-field a bit more, and the rise of video, which after all gives
you the complete performance; sound-only, however used we are to it, is
inherently unnatural. But still I think the microphone reveals things
you don't hear in the theatre acoustic, usually for the worse. I only
heard Hotter in advanced age, but you weren't half as conscious of his
wavering tone live as you were on disc.
> Of course Frick's lack of height wouldn't have mattered as Hagen, assuming
> that he took after his father...
Interesting point. But Alberich implies he's formidable, just not quite
up to the dragon job, and he *sounds* big in the music, to me anyway.
Small Hagens, though, are not uncommon; Eric Halvarson is no giant, and
I saw one in Poland who cut a remarkably Napoleonic figure, very
sinister -- more so, really, than the giant Aage Haugland at ENO
(although he was better some years later at Bayreuth). What I don't much
like is an oafish Hagen a la Matti Salminen. Karl Ridderbusch was much
better when younger (he turned pretty oafish in late career), and I was
quite impressed by a coloured guy called, I think, Edmund Zelotes
Tolliver, who was built like a Masai; but I still think Clifford Grant
is close to my ideal. It's too easy to make Hagen seem villainous at
first; in Gunther and Gutrune, who should know him best of all, he
inspires trust, and IMHO we should see some reason for that.
Cheers,
Mike
Bert Coules
> I still think Clifford Grant
> is close to my ideal.
One of the most chilling moments in the old ENO Ring was when the tabs went
up on act one scene one of The Twilight of the Gods, and we were presented
with Grant's Hagen, immobile and grim, alone in the Gibichung Hall.
Immobile and grim but, as you say, not necessarily villainous (though the
all black outfit was a bit of a giveaway!) Hagen is as much the smooth
operator as the heavy, surely: political advisor and all-round helper, with
the steel well hidden until it bursts forth.
One point about Hagen that I've never been sure of: is his line at the end
of that first Gibichung Hall scene, where he describes himself for the first
time as "the Nibelung's son" meant to be what in modern terms would be an Oh
my God! moment for the audience, a radical surprise plot twist?
I know that you'll now tell me that Wagner's audience would have been
familiar with the text, but *all* of them? If (please!) one could have been
there in the Fespielhaus in 1876, would there have been a collective gasp?
(And a related question: did Wagner follow the appalling modern habit of
giving away the entire plot in a programme synopsis?)
Bert
Mike Scott Rohan
from "Bert Coules" <ma...@bertcoules.co.uk> contains these words:
> Mike Scott Rohan wrote:
> > I still think Clifford Grant
> > is close to my ideal.
> One of the most chilling moments in the old ENO Ring was when the tabs went
> up on act one scene one of The Twilight of the Gods, and we were presented
> with Grant's Hagen, immobile and grim, alone in the Gibichung Hall.
> Immobile and grim but, as you say, not necessarily villainous (though the
> all black outfit was a bit of a giveaway!) Hagen is as much the smooth
> operator as the heavy, surely: political advisor and all-round helper, with
> the steel well hidden until it bursts forth.
Yes indeed, although the vassal's jibes suggest that he's never been
exactly a happy camper. Trouble is that in some ways Hagen mingles the
aspect of the grim older warrior in the Nibelungenlied with the younger
tough of the Volsungasaga, and the much younger man Wagner's plot
requires him to be (not that much older than Siegfried, in fact). It
almost never works out this way on stage, but Gunther is supposed to be
the eldest of the three. He should have real authority, rather than be
the weakling ignorant producers usually make him.
> One point about Hagen that I've never been sure of: is his line at the end
> of that first Gibichung Hall scene, where he describes himself for the
> first
> time as "the Nibelung's son" meant to be what in modern terms would be
> an Oh
> my God! moment for the audience, a radical surprise plot twist?
> I know that you'll now tell me that Wagner's audience would have been
> familiar with the text, but *all* of them? If (please!) one could
> have been
> there in the Fespielhaus in 1876, would there have been a collective gasp?
I don't think so. I think they would have picked it up from synopsis or
even cast list, given that they'd have seen all three operas beforehand.
Certainly Wagner doesn't go out of his way to make it a shock-horror
revelation, more a brooding acknowledgement of something stirring deep
within. Clearly his parentage is no secret within the family already; he
refers to Gunther as "echtgeboren" and Gunther later calls him
"schamloser Albensohn". No doubt they just don't realize the
implications of his parentage, or that he's still influenced/possessed
by Alberich.
> (And a related question: did Wagner follow the appalling modern habit of
> giving away the entire plot in a programme synopsis?)
I really don't know, offhand; Derrick might. I know Wagner did write
synopses of various kinds for the Ring, so one was probably available to
Bayreuth audiences even of they hadn't read the text. Unfortunately I'm
a bit occcupied to research the question right now.
Reactions to the Ring -- not so much at Bayreuth, but at early
performances elsewhere, Angelo Neumann's for example -- do reveal that
there were an awful lot of people who never so much as bothered to read
a synopsis. Bruckner's supposed reaction to Walkure -- "Very nice, but
why did they set fire to that poor girl at the end?" -- is wholly
apocryphal, but people did react nearly as stupidly, thinking Wotan was
making love to Brunnhilde at the end, for example (think Newman quotes
that one somewhere). This was an era where audiences often didn't care
what an opera was about; Shaw, in his music criticism, complains about
half the house getting up and shuffling out of Don Giovanni when the
statue's music begins, ie the stream of arias. Almost as bad as today,
really.
Cheers,
Mike
Bert Coules
> Certainly Wagner doesn't go out of his way to make it a shock-horror
> revelation, more a brooding acknowledgement of something stirring deep
> within...
I can still accept that as a revelation for the audience, just a subtle one.
> Almost as bad as today, really.
Ah, nice to know that things have progressed, isn't it?
Bert
Derrick Everett
> The message <IqadnYjItfi...@posted.plusnet> from "Bert Coules"
> <ma...@bertcoules.co.uk> contains these words:
>
<snip>
>
>> One point about Hagen that I've never been sure of: is his line at the
>> end of that first Gibichung Hall scene, where he describes himself for
>> the first time as "the Nibelung's son" meant to be what in modern
>> terms would be an Oh my God! moment for the audience, a radical
>> surprise plot twist?
>
>> I know that you'll now tell me that Wagner's audience would have been
>> familiar with the text, but *all* of them? If (please!) one could have
>> been there in the Fespielhaus in 1876, would there have been a
>> collective gasp?
>
> I don't think so. I think they would have picked it up from synopsis or
> even cast list, given that they'd have seen all three operas beforehand.
> Certainly Wagner doesn't go out of his way to make it a shock-horror
> revelation, more a brooding acknowledgement of something stirring deep
> within. Clearly his parentage is no secret within the family already; he
> refers to Gunther as "echtgeboren" and Gunther later calls him
> "schamloser Albensohn". No doubt they just don't realize the
> implications of his parentage, or that he's still influenced/possessed
> by Alberich.
>
>> (And a related question: did Wagner follow the appalling modern habit
>> of giving away the entire plot in a programme synopsis?)
>
> I really don't know, offhand; Derrick might. I know Wagner did write
> synopses of various kinds for the Ring, so one was probably available to
> Bayreuth audiences even of they hadn't read the text. Unfortunately I'm
> a bit occcupied to research the question right now.
Not synopses for the operas in general but he did write some program
notes for concert performances of "bleeding chunks". These include:
1. On the overture to 'The Flying Dutchman', for the series of three
concerts that he conducted in Zürich on 18, 20 and 22 May 1853.
2. On the overture to 'Tannhäuser', for a concert in Zürich on 16 March
1852.
3. On 'the entry of the guests', from the same opera, for the 1853
concert series.
4. A synopsis of 'Tannhäuser' act III for the same concert series.
5. For the same concerts, a short note on an extract from 'Lohengrin' act
II, for which Wagner wrote new music between scenes 3 and 4 (which I'd
love to hear but this music has been lost) and a concert ending.
6. A short note to accompany the final extract, the prelude to act III
and Bridal Chorus from 'Lohengrin', in a new concert arrangement (also
lost, regrettably).
English translations by Stewart Spencert of these programme notes can be
found in 'Wagner' volume XI, numbers 1 and 2, 1990. The original text of
item (1) was published, with misprints, in GS V, p.176-9. The remaining
items were included in SS XVI, p.167-8. The German text of several of
the notes can be found, not always accurately transcribed, in the rororo
opera booklets by Csampai and Holland.
I am not sure about the synopses of the 'Ring'. There were, of course,
detailed prose drafts as well as the 'Mythus' of 1848 but I don't know
whether Wagner made versions of them available to his audiences. He did,
however, publish the libretto of each of his later operas well in advance
of the first performance. That of 'Parsifal' was published at the end of
1877; Wagner famously sent a copy to the estranged Nietzsche with a
dedication from the "high Church councillor Richard Wagner". Nietzsche
did not get the joke.
--
Derrick Everett
====== Writing from 59°54'N 10°37'E =======
http://www.monsalvat.no/index.htm
http://www.monsalvat.no/wagnerfaq.htm
Bert Coules
Interesting stuff, as ever; thanks very much. I'm familiar with the notes
Wagner wrote for various concert pieces: he reports somewhere or other than
when he conducted the Lohengrin overture in London, the Philharmonic Society
agreed to include his piece in the programme but only if the words God and
Holy Grail were removed, "because that sort of thing wasn't allowed at a
secular concert". He doesn't, alas,say what, if anything, was substituted.
On the subject of the first Ring, were there programmes? Do any examples
still exist?
> Nietzsche did not get the joke.
Did Nietzsche ever get any jokes?
Bert
Ralph
still exist?
>
>> Nietzsche did not get the joke.
>
> Did Nietzsche ever get any jokes?
>
I sure hope so, because he could be very witty.
Ralph
A.C. Douglas
>> Nietzsche did not get the joke.
>
> Did Nietzsche ever get any jokes?
Nietzsche's sense of humor and his wit were boundless; barbed, but boundless
nevertheless.
Bert Coules
philosopher) has found it difficult to appreciate wit in others.
Bert