(image: Victor Juhasz)
There’s no such thing as a perfect Wagner
recording. Either the conductor doesn’t know what he/she is doing, or the
orchestra sound like they are sight reading, or (most commonly) there are
singers in the cast who really shouldn’t be there. To find an exception to this
rule, you have to go back to at least the early 1960s, at which point inferior
audio becomes an issue. Listeners and critics have got to accept compromises
somewhere, but the Gesamtkunstwerk doesn’t allow us to easily categorise even
purely musical criteria into hierarchies of importance.
Earlier this week, I was reviewing the new Götterdämmerung from Frankfurt, conducted by
Sebastian Weigle. As chance would have it, the following day I edited for a
journal a review from another critic of the same recording. He and I were in surprising
agreement about the specifics: that the conducting and the sound engineering
are excellent, that recording from staged performances aides the music’s drama,
and, most significantly, that the lead singers, and Lance Ryan as Siegfried in
particular, don’t give the best performances you’ll find on record.
So how, then, could our conclusions have
differed so wildly? My review concludes with an enthusiastic recommendation,
while his tells readers to steer well clear. Regarding Ryan’s singing, he even
goes as far as to say “Where was the person with judgment and musical
sensibilities, and the authority, to say “no – we cannot release this!”?”
To my ears, it would have been a great pity if
that had happened, as I consider Weigle to be one of the greatest Wagner
interpreters working today, and the insights he brings to this Götterdämmerung are all too rare among recent recordings. But
for my fellow reviewer, and apparently for many, even most, other listeners,
the flaws in the singing completely over-ride these qualities.
I’ve often heard it said that there are two
kinds of opera fans, those who are in it for the theatre, and those who are in
it for the music. I’m certainly in the second category here, and I might even
use flaws in Wagner’s concept of the music drama to justify my position. Wagner’s
mature operas have a distinctly symphonic quality, and while this is intended
to serve the higher ideas expressed through the multi-disciplinary whole, the
sheer success of his greatest music as pure music deserves to be appreciated
too. That dimension is emphasised by an audio recording, which focuses the
attention squarely on the pit, with the vocal soloists dominating, but never leading,
the orchestral performance.
From that point of view, Weigle’s Götterdämmerung is a triumph. Not only does he present a musically convincing reading, but he also communicates it
well to both the orchestra and the singers. He gives the singers plenty of
space, or perhaps he just gives them plenty of rope to hang themselves, but
there is never any sense that he is neglecting his responsibilities to the
vocalists.
My colleague’s review advises listeners to
avoid this recording and to seek out instead those by Solti, Böhm, Levine and
Barenboim. I’d certainly agree that all four of those conductors have better
singers to work with, but I’d also suggest that all four Ring cycles are elevated
above their station by critics who prioritise the singing above all else. In
comparison to Wiegle, those four conductors seem like control freaks,
especially Solti, whose cycle remains the top choice for many, even those who
don’t like the way he conducts it.
There are no easy solutions here, but Wagner
does offer one possible way out of the impasse, via Das Rheingold. That’s the one opera in the cycle that doesn’t rely
on a handful of superhuman singers in the lead roles. It’s much more of an
ensemble piece, allowing a skilled conductor with an enthusiastic and
well-integrated company to shine, even if they can’t afford the big names. And
that’s exactly what we find with Wiegle’s Rheingold,
which really is a triumph whichever way you look at it. So perhaps in future I’ll
have to tone down my praise for Götterdämmerung
recordings that have duff Siegfrieds, on the grounds that that really is a game
changer for many listeners. When in that situation the answer is clearly to
turn back to the first opera in the cycle. That way we’re much more likely to
agree about the qualities, or otherwise, of conductor, orchestra and chorus,
who between them rarely get the column inches they deserve in Wagner reviews.