Prom 18 - 26.07.13: Wagner – Siegfried

[Petrushka]

I'm afraid that his voice has been irrevocably harmed by singing these role too often in the open throated style. His singing technique is deficient for this kind of role.
Almost all singers in this fach have learned how to cover the voice to be able to deal with the outrageous demands on the voice, especially in this role. Otherwise the voice goes very quickly. A good example of a singer who did not learn was Peter Hofmann, and his career as an opera singer was over very quickly.
A good example of a singer who has adapted his technique successfully to deal with the demands of the heavy wagner roles is Bryn Terfel. His voice was a beautiful lyric baritone with a good middle register. Now he sings in the Bass-baritone world of Wotan/Sachs ect, and the demands on the voice and vocal stamina are enormous.
The main reason that Siegfried, the opera is so difficult to perform is the lack of singers who can perform the title role. It is probably the toughest tenor role in all opera.
I fear Mr Ryan is only going to get worse, especially as he is singing it again on monday at Bayreuth, followed by the Götterdämmerung Siegfried next wednesday.
I am sorry to say that these days there are so few decent singers who can handle this role, that we invariably accept the like of what was on offer last night.
Mati Turi who recently sang it with ENO North or Jay Hunter Morris, who sang it recently at the MET are two who can at the moment get through the role with a degree of safety to our ears.
I don't ever remember such a mismatch in the final scene as last night. It is a cruel destiny anyway for the tenor to finally awake Brünnhilde with his voice in tatters and she ready and rested. There have been very few in the history of Wagner singing who could bring it off. Especially when the awakened Brünnhilde was Flagstad, Varnay or Nilsson.
However, Melchior, Windgassen and Hopf did the impossible,and in more recent years only Jean Cox,Siegfried Jerusalem and Reiner Goldberg have been able to do any justice to this role.
As for the comment about "Ploddenboim" , a little research would show that Barenboim's tempo for Act 1 last night brought it in, in just under 78 minutes. Only Keilberth, Böhm and Sawallisch can match that. Solti, Karajan, Kempe and Haitink are much slower. In fact all three acts would quite easily fit onto single CDs - this is normally the sign for a fast performance. So PLODDING it certainly is not. I have absolutely no problem with anyone liking or not liking anyone or anything, but it is very unfair to give false and misleading judgements about things, especially to the less experienced among us.

Thanks for another excellent detailed response. I've known and loved the Ring for over 40 years and 'plodding' is the very last word I would have used to describe Barenboim's tempi. He understands where to push forward and where not and agree that he is a Wagner conductor of the very first rank. Looking forward to being in the hall for Gotterdammerung tomorrow night.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Oh; be fair, chaps! Why should anyone let a few irritating facts get in the way of a good prejudice?

[slarty]

Best of luck with the temperature in the hall tomorrow.
We are sweltering here(Dortmund) with the temperature at 32(90). This afternoon at Bayreuth, the temperature is expected to rise to 39(103) for Die Walküre. In that opera house it is oppressive when the temperature hits 25-27.
Drink plenty of water.

[amac4165]

I'm afraid that his voice has been irrevocably harmed by singing these role too often in the open throated style. His singing technique is deficient for this kind of role.
Almost all singers in this fach have learned how to cover the voice to be able to deal with the outrageous demands on the voice, especially in this role. Otherwise the voice goes very quickly. A good example of a singer who did not learn was Peter Hofmann, and his career as an opera singer was over very quickly.

The main reason that Siegfried, the opera is so difficult to perform is the lack of singers who can perform the title role. It is probably the toughest tenor role in all opera.
I fear Mr Ryan is only going to get worse, especially as he is singing it again on monday at Bayreuth, followed by the Götterdämmerung Siegfried next wednesday.
I am sorry to say that these days there are so few decent singers who can handle this role, that we invariably accept the like of what was on offer last night.
Mati Turi who recently sang it with ENO North or Jay Hunter Morris, who sang it recently at the MET are two who can at the moment get through the role with a degree of safety to our ears.
I don't ever remember such a mismatch in the final scene as last night. It is a cruel destiny anyway for the tenor to finally awake Brünnhilde with his voice in tatters and she ready and rested. There have been very few in the history of Wagner singing who could bring it off. Especially when the awakened Brünnhilde was Flagstad, Varnay or Nilsson.
However, Melchior, Windgassen and Hopf did the impossible,and in more recent years only Jean Cox,Siegfried Jerusalem and Reiner Goldberg have been able to do any justice to this role.
As for the comment about "Ploddenboim" , a little research would show that Barenboim's tempo for Act 1 last night brought it in, in just under 78 minutes. Only Keilberth, Böhm and Sawallisch can match that. Solti, Karajan, Kempe and Haitink are much slower. In fact all three acts would quite easily fit onto single CDs - this is normally the sign for a fast performance. So PLODDING it certainly is not. I have absolutely no problem with anyone liking or not liking anyone or anything, but it is very unfair to give false and misleading judgements about things, especially to the less experienced among us.

many a true word spoken!

Of course as you so rightly point out that Lance Ryan is probably about one of the best Siegfrieds around at the moment– although that is not actually saying much! Although in the hall or in the theatre vocal problems are slighty less obvious and one can tend to gloss over them aurally far easily than when listening to a broadcast. I think the good reviews merely reflect the fact that the reviewer has probably heard a lot worse. The role is pretty much like the Grand National - where the prize is for merely staying the course still attached to your horse! I now consider myself very fortunate indeed to I have caught Siegfried Jerusalem and the role 25 years ago. although my recording of choice is the 1953 Bayreuth with Kraus Varnay Windgassen and Hotter etc.

Being my second time around on a Barenboim ring cycle I certainly noticed a curious effect of sometimes "appearing to be slow but not actually being slow". when timed against the watch all acts seem to be pretty much consistent with a standard speed.

I don't think there's any doubt that this is about as good a Ring Cycle you are likely to find anywhere these days - certainly far superior to the very poor fare that was presented at the Royal Opera House last autumn. But it goes without saying that no Ring Cycle is going to satisfy everyone !

amac

[Simon B]

I know next to nothing about the technicalities of singing, so will leave that to the better-informed (e.g. almost anyone else)! However, I'm at least not deaf, and Lance Ryan sounded nothing like that in a concert performance of Lohengrin with the CBSO just a few years ago. Yes, he was aided by the helpful acoustic of Symphony Hall, and the characterisation was obviously completely different, but my recollection is of something much closer to ringing clarity and a much less conspicuous vibrato consistently centred around the right note...

It's obvious even to a singing ignoramus that this role must be murder to get through - the ability of Mati Turi to do so apparently as untroubled at the end as at the start whilst apparently never holding back was a thing to behold in the recent Opera North performances.

[Resurrection Man]

.......
As for the comment about "Ploddenboim" , a little research would show that Barenboim's tempo for Act 1 last night brought it in, in just under 78 minutes. Only Keilberth, Böhm and Sawallisch can match that. Solti, Karajan, Kempe and Haitink are much slower. In fact all three acts would quite easily fit onto single CDs - this is normally the sign for a fast performance. So PLODDING it certainly is not. I have absolutely no problem with anyone liking or not liking anyone or anything, but it is very unfair to give false and misleading judgements about things, especially to the less experienced among us.

Why is it false? Just because the timing might be x minutes, it depends on how those minutes are filled. A conductor could ask for some bars to be performed at a fast rate and then slow down for others....still be x minutes ..but the change in tempi might make for a more rewarding listening experience. I find Ploddenboim bland, boring and sterile in his conducting. I make nor need to make any apology for that view.

[RobertLeDiable]

Presumably she knows enough about a broad range of music to fulfill the role of Radio 3 presenter adequately. I think in her blog she explains that she isn't unfamiliar with Wagner - she's heard some of his other works - & it's just the Ring she hasn't got to grips with, for a number of reasons. In which case I think she's actually quite a good presenter for a series of programmes in which other people who do know about the Ring discuss it.

I don't understand why some people think a Radio 3 presenter needs to know the Ring to qualify to do the job. She's not a university lecturer. I know plenty of highly qualified musicians with gaps in their knowledge. There are excellent musicians who don't like Wagner and go out of their way to avoid him, as we know but why on earth would that disqualify them from introducing other music on the radio? The R3 discussions, I think it was made plain, were designed as an introduction to people who don't know the Ring and perhaps find it intimidating - an excellent idea in the context of the Proms, where many listeners will be coming to it for the first time. So why not have a presenter who comes from that position and is intelligent enough to put the right questions to the experts, as S M-P certainly is? In her Guardian blog she explained that, coming from a Jewish family with a history of losses in the holocaust, she tended to avoid Wagner as a student. Later she got to know Tristan, Parsifal and Meistersinger, but has never got round to the Ring. I think that's understandable.

She's one of R3's brightest, most articulate presenters. The naysayers should leave her alone.

And as an aside - how nice to hear Paul Mason in that Siegfried discussion. Quite how he got from being a music academic to BBC Economics Editor I can't imagine, but his Wagner insights were fascinating.

[slarty]

many a true word spoken!



Being my second time around on a Barenboim ring cycle I certainly noticed a curious effect of sometimes "appearing to be slow but not actually being slow". when timed against the watch all acts seem to be pretty much consistent with a standard speed.

I don't think there's any doubt that this is about as good a Ring Cycle you are likely to find anywhere these days - certainly far superior to the very poor fare that was presented at the Royal Opera House last autumn. But it goes without saying that no Ring Cycle is going to satisfy everyone !

amac

Bravo Amac. you have certainly hit upon the great secret of Wagner conducting/interpretation. The ability to move certain passages on while expanding others and to allow
the singers licence to amend their interpretations from rehearsal to performance is some thing that Krauss certainly had and was the hallmark of a Furtwängler performance, and Furtwängler was and still is the main influence on DB.
My favourite Bayreuth Ring would be Keilberth 1955 or Krauss 1953.

[Tapiola]

Bravo Amac. you have certainly hit upon the great secret of Wagner conducting/interpretation. The ability to move certain passages on while expanding others and to allow
the singers licence to amend their interpretations from rehearsal to performance is some thing that Krauss certainly had and was the hallmark of a Furtwängler performance, and Furtwängler was and still is the main influence on DB.
My favourite Bayreuth Ring would be Keilberth 1955 or Krauss 1953.

Ditto! With a slight preference for Krauss (for the more natural ebb and flow; Keilberth can be a little matter-of-fact, imo).

[Tapiola]

Ploddenboim

I am no great fan of DB, though I can appreciate what he does. I wouldn't go so far as plodding, though for me, my view would approach that of Shostakovich on Hindemith (as "reported" in Testimony"): always well put together and convincing, but just doesn't spark.

[amateur51]

I make nor need to make any apology for that view.

The cry of the contrarian down the ages

[Nick Armstrong]

The cry of the contrarian down the ages

Life would be dull without 'em!

Re the performance of Siegfried, I only heard the 'Fafner waking' section and agree with comments above that the orchestra sounded quite fantastic. Haven't heard enough to comment on the merits of DB's conducting. (I'm torn about him - you have to be impressed with his achievements, but he was personally absolutely vile to a professional musician friend some years ago, and I've struggled to 'trust' him ever since).

As for the singer, I've not been following closely and may have missed the signposts but I would be interested to know who was in the hall listening and who heard it on the radio. I've long been amazed how savagely unflattering Radio 3's live mikes are to singers - in a couple of instances where I've been there live and then heard the same concert recorded at the same time from the radio, a singer whose performance was enjoyable live was unlistenable-to on the radio. (It's why I tend to stick to orchestral, chamber and instrumental concerts on R3).

[Zucchini]

[In answer to 'Was Lance Ryan really so bad?'] Not in my view, though I can see why some were put out by his sometimes effortful approximation. I think he communicated the character of Siegfried well. He's a raw youth, so surely it's about more than just hitting his notes perfectly.

Jessica Duchen in the Independent says much the same:

"But Siegfried belongs to its Heldentenor. The charismatic Lance Ryan, from Canada, who sings the role at the Bayreuth Festival this year, seemed in his element, meeting its gargantuan demands with only a hint of tiredness near the end. Nor was he above horsing about with the horn player who came forward to deliver Siegfried’s personal fanfare..."
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...734692.htmlou:

I haven't heard the transmission but it's how he sounded in the hall that matters.

[slarty]

Life would be dull without 'em!

As for the singer, I've not been following closely and may have missed the signposts but I would be interested to know who was in the hall listening and who heard it on the radio. I've long been amazed how savagely unflattering Radio 3's live mikes are to singers - in a couple of instances where I've been there live and then heard the same concert recorded at the same time from the radio, a singer whose performance was enjoyable live was unlistenable-to on the radio. (It's why I tend to stick to orchestral, chamber and instrumental concerts on R3).

Hi Caliban - I am listening with digital radio here in Germany and as a collector of live opera broadcasts for almost 50 years, I can agree that very occasionally it is not so bad live "in the hall" as it can be from Radio. However, the Albert Hall acoustic is very fair and honest over the airwaves.Also, the BBC use a little extra reverberation to make the sound more palatable. I have sat in the RAH many times also and have always found that the voice was very faithfully reproduced on broadcasts.
My collection of Prom broadcasts(with Wagner singing) goes back to the early 50s and I have never though of it as an unfair radio acoustic.
By comparison Bavarian Radio are using so much reverberation from Bayreuth these days, it is a joke. It sounds as if the broadcast is being performed in a cathedral. This will always be a kindness to voices, adding an aural gloss to what can be a very severe and relentless assault on the ears, but it bears no relation to the true sound one hears from the auditorium in the Festspielhaus, where I've sat many times.
The recording that bears the closest resemblance to the actual sound of the Bayreuth acoustic is the old Philips Ring with Karl Böhm.

[gurnemanz]

"Was Lance Ryan really so bad?": I claim no technical expertise in assessing a voice, but thought he came over very well with an appealing "stage" presence and clear diction for a non-native-speaker. The chap next to us thought he lacked power - fair comment, I suppose. There was a very positive buzz around the Hall in in the intervals.