Early Bayreuth Singing
Jonathan Brown
Wagner Society's "Wagner News" (February 2005) of "100 Jahre Bayreuth
auf Schallplatte - Die Frühen Festspielsänger 1876-1906 - The Early
Bayreuth Festival Singers 1876-1906": Gebhardt JGCD 0062-12.
Jonathan Brown
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Some enterprising enthusiasts from the German Wagner Society (Michael
Seil and Rüdiger Pohl) have produced the most important collection of
historical Wagner singing in more than 25 years. The massive 12-CD set
collects 305 shellac sides comprising 15 hours and 40 minutes of early
Wagner. The earliest is from April/May 1900 - the 51-year old Hermann
Winkelmann, Bayreuth’s first Parsifal, singing an unsteady "Am stillen
Herd" - to the latest from August 1927 - Karl Muck conducting the
Bayreuth Festival Orchestra in a rock-solid, soaring Transformation
scene.
The last comparable collection was Sänger auf dem Grünen Hügel (EMI 1C
181-30 669/78 M), a 10-LP set issued in 1976 to mark the centenary of
Bayreuth. The Gebhardt set was issued to mark the centenary of the
Gramophone & Typewriter Co. (G&T) recordings made in Bayreuth in 1904
when Will Gaisberg and Bruno Seidler-Winkler set up their recording
equipment in the Hotel Sonne in Richard Wagner Straße (now destroyed).
They may have made as many as 74 recordings, but only 39 were ever
published, and only 18 were of Wagner. 23 of them are in the Gebhardt
set, including 16 Wagner. The remaining two are presumably lost. In
one of several informative notes in the 116-page booklet, Michael
Seil, says the pioneering effort was a commercial flop, which is one
reason the records became so rare.
Some of the G&Ts have been previously re-issued. For example, 8 were
in volume 5 of The Harold Wayne Collection (Symposium 1081) issued in
1990. But there has never been such a comprehensive set as this. The
Gebhardt set was only made possible because of international
cooperation among collectors and archives. The fact that we have had
to wait 100 years to hear all surviving copies when they have long
been out of copyright is, alas, a damning indictment of the
covetousness of collectors. However, international cooperation has now
broken all that.
The excerpts are set out opera by opera which makes for easy
comprehension. Wherever possible, recordings by a singer
contemporaneous with their appearance at Bayreuth are included. If
they are not available, the singer in another Wagnerian role is used.
If that is not available, then a non-Wagnerian role is used. Where
more than one singer has recorded an excerpt, they are reproduced at
the end of the CD, or on a later CD. Each of the 93 Bayreuth singers
has a short biography, and is indexed. If a singer had not sung at
Bayreuth and is accompanying a Bayreuth singer, there is no biography
and no index. The message seems to be: if you have not sung at
Bayreuth, nobody needs to know about you. Five Bayreuth conductors are
included - Felix Mottl (conducting from Wagner’s Kaiser-Marsch on a
Mapleson cylinder - if only it had been something else), Karl Muck,
Hugo Rüdel, Richard Strauss, and Siegfried Wagner.
The booklet accompanying the CDs is a model of comprehensiveness, with
excellent discographical details, black and white pictures of many of
the singers, and a colour photograph of one G&T label - Mime Erzählung
as "Rheingold" gesungen von Hans Breuer, Hofopernsänger, Bayreuth
(G.C.-2-42922). As a measure of how exhaustive the collection is, the
booklet lists 26 recordings, all Wagner except 7, which the producers
have been unable to discover despite years of searching. They do not
identify which are the two missing Wagner G&Ts. If you are a
collector, these are the records to covet.
The recordings cover the years Cosima Wagner was in charge of the
Festival: 1876-1906. A lengthy article by Rüdiger Pohl examines these
years and the Wagner style Cosima sought to develop. Another article
by Michael Seil The Bayreuth vocal style or "what can we hear?" is
even more fascinating because it enables us to listen to singers
discussed who may or may not have exemplified the style irreverently
known as the "Bayreuth bark": clear declamation, limited legato, no
tremolo, and portamento only when the score required it. Seil reports
Ernest van Dyck (Parsifal 1888-1912, Lohengrin 1894) as having said
that "in clima[c]tic, dramatic moments the vocal tone and legato were
to be dispensed with totally and that the text had to be articulated
with the greatest possible vehemence", as can be heard in van Dyck’s
1905 recording of "Ich grolle nicht" reproduced in the set. I turned
quickly to this to get an echt example of the "Bayreuth bark", but was
disappointed. It wasn’t as bad as the expression suggests. What is
wrong afterall with clear enunciation and dramatic expression in a
singing line? Seil notes that while there was a Bayreuth style, not
all singers followed it.
What struck me more than questions of style were the nature of the
voices. Generally they are purer and project effortlessly: in other
words, there is ample tone with a minimum of breath. Basses are more
solid. Sopranos are lighter and more tender, and carry without being
forced. The singers were very different to those of today. Just as
athletes are bigger, stronger and faster than they were 100 years ago,
so too singers have changed through generations of diet and training.
Inevitably this has affected how they can sing. However, I am not sure
they would want to sing like these singers from the Bayreuth of old.
What are the recordings like? Technically the transfers are superb,
thanks to Christian Zwarg, although I say this guardedly: I have never
heard any of them played in their original form. There is minimal
surface noise and little discernible filtering. The voices are
surprisingly full, the accompanying orchestras or piano subdued. Some
of the singers were noticeably nervous - many would not record what
they were singing at Bayreuth for reasons which are not clear - and
some out of tune. By modern standards, many of the recordings should
never have been released. They do the singers no justice at all.
Listening to the recordings is not easy: it requires much
concentration, patience, and some imagination. It took me three
months. It was worth it. It will always be interesting to hear the
faint or fading voices of singers who sang in Wagner’s day or close to
it, Winkelmann, for example, (at least once) because he was Wagner’s
first Parsifal. I was a third-way through when I came upon John
Hughes’s review in the International Record Review which began
“Hedonists should stop here.” (October 2004, p. 24) I was mildly
affronted (I am a hedonist, among other things), but continued
nonetheless.
These are some of the singers and conductors that stood out:
Theodor Bertram. He sang the Dutchman in 1901-1902, and is recorded
singing several excerpts in 1906-1907 when he was 38. He has a
wonderful doom-laden, sometimes lugubrious, but always compelling
bass. The accompanying notes say be became an alcoholic after both his
spouses died, and his vocal prowess rapidly declined. Some of this can
be detected, but it is by no means fatal. His contemporaneous 1902
recording of the Dutchman is wonderfully tender and yearning. Fearing
he would get no more Bayreuth engagements, he hanged himself in a
hotel room with a view of the Festspielhaus (but after the Festival).
In the early 1970s Preiser issued an LP (CO 316) of Bertram singing
which included 8 excerpts from Wagner, including 4 not reproduced in
the Gebhardt set. That answers the question whether the Gebhardt set
includes all the Wagner its Bayreuth singers recorded, although it is
pretty good on Bertram: it includes 16 of his Wagner recordings.
Ernst Kraus. In a way he is the most important singer in the
collection. Bayreuth’s Siegfried from 1899 to 1909, he also sang
Siegmund, Stolzing and Erik in that period. More excerpts are devoted
to him (34) than any other singer. His voice is pure tone, wayward and
unsteady at times, but strong as an ox. The notes tell us he initially
worked as a brewer and became the leading Heldentenor of the Berlin
Opera. His Siegfried is disarming: his bright, unforced, forthright
tone, somewhat brash, makes him seem headstrong and fearless, and
somewhat unintelligent.
Ottilie Metzger. She sang a number of minor roles at Bayreuth between
1901-1912, and appears in 6 excerpts. Her Erda (Das Rheingold with
orchestra, Siegfried with piano) and Waltraute (Götterdämmerung with
orchestra) are infused with a dark authority that serves Wagner’s
purpose exactly. In the Hotel Sonne she sang only from Carmen. I
longed to hear more of her. She was sent to Auschwitz and killed in
1943.
Johanna Gadski. Eva was the only role Johanna Gadski sang at Bayreuth
(1899), but the bulk of her 10 excerpts are of Brünnhilde, the role
she was famous for in New York, and which she sings brilliantly. She
is also heard singing Elsa with passion on a Mapleson cylinder which
shows how a live performance, despite intrusive recording noises, can
stand out among recordings made in a studio or hotel room. She is also
more outstanding than Ellen Gulbranson (Brünnhilde, 1896-1906) who
sings on 7 excerpts, none of them unfortunately Brünnhilde. The notes
tell us that her “Hojotoho” which can be found on several LPs is not
authentic: she never recorded the piece for Pathé and the recording
for G&T is missing. What we have of her does not make me yearn for
more.
Berta Morena. Not a Bayreuth singer. Not in the index. No biographical
details. She sings a disproportionately sweet and tender Sieglinde in
response to the rather brutish ardour of Ernst Kraus’s Siegmund. The
same fate befell Felicie Kaschowska (Ortrud): she accompanies the
sweet-voiced Frieda Hempel (Elsa) who was at Bayreuth in 1906 and
1908; and also Minnie Saltzmann-Stevens (Brünnhilde): she accompanyies
Peter Cornelius (Siegmund) in a stirring scene from Die Walküre from
1906, the year he sang Siegmund at Bayreuth. Percy Pitt is conducting.
Ernst Wachter. He is represented by only one excerpt, from Brüll’s Das
Goldene Kreuz. He sang Fasolt and Hunding in 1896 and 1897 and
Gurnemanz in 1897 and 1899. Presumably there is no recording of him
singing Wagner. One of the values of a collection such as this, as
frustrating as it may be, is that the example given makes you want to
hear the singer in Wagner. I wanted to hear him sing Gurnemanz. His
warm, effortless bass seemed well suited to the role.
Bruno Seidler-Winkler. He provides the piano and orchestral
accompaniment on 97 excerpts, from Bayreuth (piano, 1904) to Berlin
(orchestra, 1922), but as he did not conduct at Bayreuth, he does not
rate the index or biographical notes. His conducting of Die
Meistersinger is particularly remarkable where he maintains the pulse
and pace in an accompaniment that is every way as important as the
singing.
Hugo Rüdel. He directed the chorus at Bayreuth from 1906 to 1934, and
is represented on 9 excerpts, but all with the chorus of the Kgl.
Hofoper Berlin, not Bayreuth. His choruses are wonderfully controlled
and intense, especially the giddy Spinning Chorus, a menacing Sailors
Chorus, and a weary group of Pilgrims. Another choral marvel is the
1904 Rhinemaidens Bruno Seidler-Winkler got round the piano at the
Hotel Sonne. Ottilie Metzger is one of them: they sing with a purity
and force that sparkles with gold.
It seemed clear to me - and I am no aficionado of historical
recordings, only curious - that the set does not represent anything
like the best in Wagner singing, either in its day or otherwise. Being
close to Wagner’s day does not bestow upon the singers a particular
sanctity. Nor does Bayreuth have a monopoly on good Wagner singing,
then or now. The best historical recording sets from those early days
come from outside Bayreuth, and contain astonishing examples of
singing the likes of which we never hear today. Listen, for example,
to Michael Bohnen and Lotte Lehmann singing "Guten Abend, Meister" in
1916 (Great Operas at the Met: Die Meistersinger: MET 523-CD, 1994),
Eva von der Osten singing "Euch Lüften, die mein Klagen" from
Lohengrin in 1911 (Richard Wagner on Record: Preiser 89404, 1997), and
Desider Zador singing "Bin ich nun frei?" from Das Rheingold in 1909
(Zoppot - Das Bayreuth des Nordens und seine Sänger: Preiser 89406,
2000). Bohnen was in Bayreuth in 1914 (Daland, Hunding), too late for
the Cosima years, perhaps luckily. These were glorious singers.
However, the true glory years - I say this without having lived in
them or been brought up on them - were the inter-war years, or more
exactly the years into the war, until the bombs stopped Wagner
performances. For all her arch-traditionalism, Cosima never achieved
these heights and, given her peculiar efforts, probably didn’t dream
of them either.
Should every Wagnerian buy a copy? Certainly every library and music
school should have a set so Wagner enthusiasts and trainee singers can
have access to what are recordings of unparalleled historical
importance. The set is so cheap. I saw dozens of Festival-goers pass
by tables piled high with the boxes during the Bayreuth Festival last
year. Soon afterwards they were remaindered
(www.berkshirerecordoutlet.com). A centenary commercial flop? Mind
you, John Hughes was right: hedonists beware.