[Met Performance] CID:131000
Fidelio {65} Matinee Broadcast ed. Metropolitan Opera House: 02/22/1941., Broadcast
(Broadcast
Review)
Metropolitan Opera House
February 22, 1941 Matinee Broadcast
FIDELIO {65}
Leonore.................Kirsten Flagstad
Florestan...............René Maison
Don Pizarro.............Julius Huehn
Rocco...................Alexander Kipnis
Marzelline..............Marita Farell
Jaquino.................Karl Laufkötter
Don Fernando............Herbert Janssen
First Prisoner..........Emery Darcy
Second Prisoner.........John Gurney
Conductor...............Bruno Walter
Rebroadcast on Sirius Metropolitan Opera
Review of Jerome D. Bohm in the Herald Tribune
Walter Directs "Fidelio" Again at Metropolitan
Mme. Flagstad Is Leonore in Opera by Beethoven, Maison and Kipnis Sing
Bruno Walter directed the second performance of the season of Beethoven's "Fidelio" at the Metropolitan Opera House yesterday afternoon, again giving a highly dramatic, moving and ennobling account of the score, which reached its apex in a superb performance of the third "Leonore" overture before the second scene of the last act.
The cast was that of the previous presentation, with Kirsten Flagstad as Leonore, René Maison as Florestan, Alexander Kipnis as Rocco, Julius Huehn as Don Pizzaro, Herbert Janssen as Don Fernando, Marita Farell as Marzelline, Karl Laufkötter as Jacquino and Emery Darcy and John Gurney as first and second prisoners.
Mme. Flagstad's conception of Leonore does not yet rank with her great Wagnerian delineations. Beethoven makes demands on her voice in the way of flexibility which she meets carefully, but without the emotional abandon essential to full realization of her intentions.
Her singing of the "Abscheulicher" aria and of the music of the rescue scene with its deliriously joyous duet, "Namenloser Freude," brings with it much that is tonally beautiful, but there is not enough intensity or inwardness in her conception to really move the listener to the core, as he should be moved, although there are indications that perhaps in time the Norwegian soprano will reach greater interpretive heights here, too, as she has in the portrayals of Isolde and Brünnhilde.
The Florestan of Mr. Maison was affectingly and sometimes poignantly voiced. Mr. Kipnis's assumption of the part of beneficent jailer, Rocco, was both vocally and dramatically compelling. Miss Farell, aside from some spread top tones, sang agreeably, and her Marzelline is, pictorially viewed, one of the most convincing. Mr. Laukötter's Jacquino and Mr. Janssen's sympathetically voiced Don Fernando contributed valuably to a performance which has but one serious blemish, the Don Pizzaro of Mr. Huehn, which is voiced without tonal pithiness and is quite absurd as a piece of characterization.