Opera On 3 - Götterdämmerung

[Master Jacques]

I have an aversion to Wagner in English (and also, I’m afraid, to Reginald Goodall) so I can’t appreciate Remedios as much as I might. I’ve read that an international career escaped him because he coudln’t be bothered to improve his German pronunciation!

I think the truth is perhaps rather different. Nobody was a more assiduous worker than Remedios, and on the rare occasions where he was asked to sing in German, he took great pains working with coaches to get his pronunciation spot on. The reason he didn't have an international career was that he couldn't read music, so every role he learned at ENO was done with a great number of painstaking sessions (under Goodall primarily, in Wagner) to teach him everything by ear. Once he'd got it, the music stuck like glue and he was rock solid. He wouldn't have been able to work like that in Germany, and lacked the confidence to try - though given his sweet robustness of tone, the offers most certainly came in.

As for Wagner in English ... I don't want to open the "old wounds" of another "Opera in English" thread, but suffice it to say that I had one German musician friend who told me that he envied us the Andrew Porter English ring, and only wished that some kind soul would translate it into German, so that natives could understand Wagner's impossibly fustian text themselves! Wagner's texts are antiquated, verbal tripe for many modern Germanists, and they're starting to mitigate against production of his operas. A question of time, I guess, before textual changes begin to be made.

[Master Jacques]

P.S. I think I'm right in saying that Jon Vickers (whose acting was magnificent, in my opinion) never sang Siegfried, considering it would wreck his voice. I'd love somebody to tell me that I'm wrong about that, though!

[Keraulophone]

P.S. I think I'm right in saying that Jon Vickers (whose acting was magnificent, in my opinion) never sang Siegfried, considering it would wreck his voice. I'd love somebody to tell me that I'm wrong about that, though!

Rupert Christiansen writes, in Opera magazine, how he managed to get just one interview with Vickers. He confirms that “his attitude to Wagner was ambivalent: he never sang Lohengrin, Siegfried or Götterdämmerung and notoriously withdrew from a contracted Tannhäuser on the theologically contentious grounds that it ‘challenged the redemptive work of Jesus Christ.’

Parsifal, however, which he sang magnificently for 30 years, didn't seem to bother him, despite his stated view that it was ‘the most blasphemous work ever'. It is an open question as to how much this selectivity was motivated by his personal beliefs and how much by fear of high-lying vocal lines that would expose the increasingly obtrusive flaws in his intonation.”

[Pulcinella]

Would a friendly host please correct the title of this thread?
Or do I ask this via the Pedants' Paradise thread?

Thanks

[Darkbloom]

It was probably for the best that Vickers never sang Lohengrin. I wouldn't want to be the Telramund in Act 1, seeing Vickers bearing down on me with a sword. There probably wasn't an opera house that could afford the insurance.

[Conchis]

Rupert Christiansen writes, in Opera magazine, how he managed to get just one interview with Vickers. He confirms that “his attitude to Wagner was ambivalent: he never sang Lohengrin, Siegfried or Götterdämmerung and notoriously withdrew from a contracted Tannhäuser on the theologically contentious grounds that it ‘challenged the redemptive work of Jesus Christ.’

Parsifal, however, which he sang magnificently for 30 years, didn't seem to bother him, despite his stated view that it was ‘the most blasphemous work ever'. It is an open question as to how much this selectivity was motivated by his personal beliefs and how much by fear of high-lying vocal lines that would expose the increasingly obtrusive flaws in his intonation.”

Walter Legge wrote amusingly of the Vickers Tannhauser debacle, but he was probably wrong to accept the role and wise to cancel. His stand in got rather horrible reviews, apparently.

Vickers was certainly ambivalent about Wagner. Here he goes into a bit of a rant about the man during a late career recital:https://youtu.be/KUiMq0ENvRQ

[gradus]

Vickers last proms appearance was in Das Lied where he nearly came unstuck in some very tricky high passages but who cares, he was an artist who could electrify an audience in a concert performance as well as in the theatre with his unparalleled intensity of voice and interpretation, once seen, never forgotten.