[Met Performance] CID:138850
Siegfried {199}
Ring Cycle [75] Uncut. Metropolitan Opera House: 02/13/1945.
(Review)
Metropolitan Opera House
February 13, 1945
SIEGFRIED {199}
Der Ring des Nibelungen: Cycle [75] Uncut
Wagner-Wagner
Siegfried...............Lauritz Melchior
Brünnhilde..............Helen Traubel
Wanderer................Norman Cordon
Erda....................Kerstin Thorborg
Mime....................Karl Laufkötter
Alberich................Frederick Lechner
Fafner..................Emanuel List
Forest Bird.............Nadine Conner
Conductor...............George Szell
Director................Lothar Wallerstein
Set designer............Hans Kautsky
Set designer............Jonel Jorgulesco
Siegfried received two performances this season.
[Jorgulesco designed the set only for Act III, Scene 2. Traubel's costume was designed by Adrian.]
Review of Jerome D. Bohm in the Herald Tribune
Melchior Heard as Siegfried at Metropolitan
Helen Traubel Sings Role of Brünnhilde; Cordon Is Cast as the Wanderer
The first presentation this season of Wagner's "Siegfried" at the Metropolitan Opera House last night, given as the third performance in the unabridged version of the "Ring" Cycle, differed but little from other presentations of this music-drama heard here in recent years. It offered but one important change of cast, the Wanderer of Mr. Cordon, and while this was a carefully prepared delineation of the role of the Wotan who suffers defeat at the hand of the young Siegfried, it was, viewed both vocally and dramatically, a disappointing one. Mr. Cordon's bass voice has not the power to cope successfully with the many arduous pages of music penned by Wagner for this part; there were many passages, notably in the scene with Erda and Siegfried in the third act, where the singer was reduced to all but inaudibility by the mighty surge of the orchestra. Some of Mr. Cordon's singing in the less heavily orchestrated portions, when the music did not lie either too high or too low for him, was tonally persuasive and expressive. Undoubtedly his acting of the role will in time gain in effectiveness, for he brings to it his fine presence, but as yet his gestures and movements are on the tentative side.
Mr. Melchior's assumption of the title role again was characterized by seemingly inexhaustible vocal resources. In fact, he sang his part of the final love duet with a brilliancy of tone unsurpassed by him. Miss Traubel, too, invested her music with vocal splendor, although again regrettably omitting the high C in "Ewig bin ich," thereby seriously impairing one of the first of Wagner's melodies.
As Mime, the hypocritical, scheming Mr. Laufkötter repeated one of the most telling of present-day operatic portrayals, and Mr. Lechner did well with the role of the malignant Alberich. Miss Thorborg contributed some of the most impressive vocalism she has offered this season as Erda, and Miss Conner delivered the music of the Voice of the Forest Bird charmingly.
Once again the lion's share of the presentation's cogency must go to Mr. Szell for his justly paced, highly perceptive discourse of the orchestral score which realized Wagner's desires in poetic and eloquent fashion as well as from the purely tonal facet, for he elicited consistently agreeable sonorities from his musicians.