Richard Wagner (1813-1883)
Die Walküre
Brünnhilde: Laila Andersson-Palme (soprano); Siegmund: Sven-Olof Eliasson (tenor); Sieglinde: Lisbeth Balslev (soprano); Hagen: Aage Haugland (bass); Wotan: Leif Roar (bass-baritone); Fricka: Minna Nyhus (mezzo-soprano); Valkyries: Gertrud Spliid, Dorthe Steengard, Antje Jansen, Margrethe Danielsen, Annelise Rye, Else Mogensen, Annemaria Møller, Else Paaske
Aarhus Symphony Orchestra/Francesco Cristofoli
rec. live, August 1987, Den Jyske Opera, Aarhus, Denmark ADD
Synopsis, interview and biographies in Swedish and English; no libretto
Sterling CDA1870-72 [3 CDs: 205]
The Sterling label continues to release recordings of live performances starring Laila Andersson-Palme. In March last year I reviewed her thrilling Elektra; previous reviews of recordings from this same source include Göran Forsling’s review in 2018 of Götterdämmerung in which he mentions the excerpts from this Die Walküre which are included in From Queen of the Night to Elektra, an anthology of her performances (also reviewed by him ).
As far as I can divine this is uncut – unlike the Elektra I reviewed. That the sound is remarkably good is evident from the opening bars depicting Siegmund’s desperate escape. A bit of clumping and creaking and stage noises are inevitable but can actually be quite atmospheric – and of course indicative of this being live – but there is almost constant loud coughing here from a very inattentive audience, which at times becomes very irksome. The conducting and playing are first rate – an absolutely lovely cello solo precedes Siegmund’s “Kühlende Labung gab mir der Quell” and the famous Ride of the Valkyries is splendid, despite a couple of singers struggling. However, it also soon becomes apparent that the weakest link here is Sven-Olof Eliasson, whose tenor has an uncomfortable slow pulse – he croons and bleats somewhat in “Winterstürme” and his German is over-careful, contrasting strongly with Lisbeth Balslev’s full, vibrant soprano with its fast, flickering vibrato and her idiomatic delivery of the text. I have never been a great fan of Aage Haugland’s large, unwieldy bass; he tends to sing “straight” with a minimum of vibrato, often sounding unsteady, but he is an imposing, menacing presence. However, if the first act of Die Walküre – perhaps my favourite in all of the Ring – does not thrill, then the whole fails.
The opening of Act Two elicits a range of responses in me: from mild disappointment at some poor intonation and scrappy playing from the orchestra – from which, fortunately, they soon recover – and a similar reaction to Leif Roar’s competent but workaday Wotan, which does not quite have sufficient weight, to admiration for the skill with which Andersson-Palme negotiates Brünnhilde’s music, always singing within her considerable means and somehow managing to suggest that her shining soprano is actually a larger instrument than it actually is. This is especially noticeable in passages such as the Todesverkündigung . She even has a trill – which Wagner calls for but rarely gets. Admirable, too, is Minna Nyhus’s impassioned, passionate Fricka, frequently deploying her lower register tellingly and making the most of the text – whereas Roar tends to let key words and phrases such as “Heut’ hast du’s erlebt!” go for little. He is listed here as a bass-baritone but his greatest successes were in true Wagnerian baritone roles, hence the lack of heft and gravitas in his Wotan. I make claims above for the importance of the first act but Wotan’s role in the conclusion of Act III is vital, too. “Wo ist Brünnhild’?” is especially weak and from “Leb wohl” onwards I cannot dismiss from my mind the assumptions by singers such as Friedrich Schorr, Ferdinand Frantz, George London, Thomas Stewart and Hans Hotter in his prime; Roar pales by comparison in such company. Furthermore, he makes a complete hash of his crucial, final declamation, “Wer meines Speeres Spitze fürchtet, durchstreite das Feuer nie!” (Whoever fears the point of my spear shall never walk through the fire!”), taking too many breaths between phrases and reducing the text to gobbledygook by completely distorting every vowel in order to try to generate more volume, and both the brass and woodwind are audibly tiring here. Meanwhile, the audience continues to hack.
In the end, the deficiencies on the male side of the cast here disqualify this performance from an enthusiastic recommendation unless you want a souvenir of Andersson-Palme’s considerable achievement as Brünnhilde.
Ralph Moore
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