Opera on 3: Die Meistersinger (Met)

[Pianorak]

that Dutchman excerpt is simply sensational. Wow.

Sensational - no other word for it. Just ordered the Sawallisch Dutchman (Crass and Silja) Must admit I had never heard of Franz Crass.

[Roehre]

Sensational - no other word for it. Just ordered the Sawallisch Dutchman (Crass and Silja) Must admit I had never heard of Franz Crass.

It's also one of the earliest recordings of Silja.

[Prommer]

Meistersinger is a very difficult piece to get right, especially with the weight of the idea that it should be 'witty' or at least funny in parts. To my mind, it is not really amusing as such, but there is an undoubted quality of 'bonheur' throughout, in the score.

[Pianorak]

It's also one of the earliest recordings of Silja.

And her 1995 Glyndebourne The Makropulos Case (one of) the last?

[Roehre]

And her 1995 Glyndebourne The Makropulos Case (one of) the last?

Indeed.

[Petrushka]

Must admit I had never heard of Franz Crass.

A stalwart of the Bayreuth Festival in the 1970s. I saw him as the narrator in Schoenberg's Gurrelieder in one of Simon Rattle's Birmingham performances.

[Radames]

I thought this was a disappointing transmission. The acoustics were pretty terrible (I know, it's live but I have heard a lot better live opera performances). The orchestra sounds all the same (maybe part of the acoustics of the transmission) and the whole thing was pretty flat. Impossible to judge if it was the performance or just the transmission. The chorus was the worst, at times not together and not well in tune. But hopefully the others enjoyed it.

[Flosshilde]

Rapturous applause & bravos at the end.

I thought the singing was pretty poor generally.

[DracoM]

The Met audience to a tee, I'm afraid. The chorus singing was the very worst I have heard even from the Met, and the singing obtusely gallumphing, and an Eva who really, really didn't have it, and a light as air Sachs who made the part anonymous. BUT what I think fired up the Met clappers was the full time return to the rostrum of James Levine who has been both ill and maybe worse than that, yet her he was conducting a massive Wagner piece with all that that implies, and doing it so well.

NYC audiences are hugely sentimental, they love their old favourites, it convinces them of continuity in a world of bewildering and rapid change, and makes that audience forgiving of, and maybe even self-inducedly deaf to imperfections. Well, that is, when they are in public. Privately, members of the same audience can be just as critical as posters on this thread. Two years ago I heard the late Lorin Maazel conduct the most execrable Don Carlos I have ever heard, the audience adored at the shrine, but I can promise you that in the foyer afterwards, there was impatience at his pacing, phrasing, and not a little critical scoffing too in the chat in the cloakroom queue.

It is a weird symbiosis of ambivalences.

[gurnemanz]

A stalwart of the Bayreuth Festival in the 1970s. I saw him as the narrator in Schoenberg's Gurrelieder in one of Simon Rattle's Birmingham performances.

Re Franz Crass. He's a marvellous King Henry on the classic Matacic Lohengrin, Bayreuth 1959. (Comes with the essential cheapo Wagner's Vision 50 CD box). On CD for Böhm I have his Rocco with Gwyneth Jones, Peter Schreier etc and Sarastro in the 1964 Zauberflöte (where you also get Fritz Wunderlich as Tamino, the F-D Papageno and Hans Hotter as Sprecher)

[Pianorak]

Sarastro in the 1964 Zauberflöte (where you also get Fritz Wunderlich as Tamino, the F-D Papageno and Hans Hotter as Sprecher)

Am very tempted to get that. The Dutchman is wending his way now all the way from Germany as I type. Can't wait!

[Flosshilde]

Just seen that next Saturday's opera is also from the Met. I hope that it doesn't mark the resumption of the regular relays, which I thought had been abandoned in favour of a much more mixed (& better) offering.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I must try and listen on i-Player, this being one of my favourite operas.