Grand Opera: The Story of the Met (24 page)

The jubilant critics predicted that the conductor’s decade would lead to the triumph of the esteemed “conductor’s opera” over the deprecated “singer’s opera.” “Monuments of operatic art,” as Edward Johnson called them, would at last take their rightful and regular place at the Met. In Johnson’s taxonomy, “monuments” are those works of the literature “which do not enjoy (and may never have enjoyed) the following they deserve but which have been a source of inspiration to operatic composers and a delight to students of the art.” They are canonical pieces whose presence in the repertoire rests on prestige and not popularity. Revivals of the monuments, Johnson hoped, would so captivate the general public that these rarely performed works would, in time, join such favorites as
Carmen
and
Tristan und Isolde
in the second of his four categories, “perennial classics.” (Johnson’s remaining classes were “operas revived for a distinguished personality” and “contemporary opera.”) Olin Downes, for one, claiming that the future was already here, asserted that the plaudits of the public were, in this new age, dependent not on the singer but on the conductor (
Times,
Nov. 23, 1941).
¹⁵

Johnson defines monuments without naming them. In a similar reflection, Walter exhibits no such reticence: “Men and events stand in the glaring light of historic glory today and disappear tomorrow, and we may ask: What has remained of all this danse macabre? What has proved durable in those dust storms of history? A question of problematic meaning. Certain is one thing: Survival of Mozart’s
Nozze di Figaro,
of Beethoven’s
Fidelio,
Gluck’s
Orfeo
.” To Walter’s list, and through the lens of the repertoire of the 1940s, we add Gluck’s
Alceste,
Mozart’s
Don Giovanni, Die Zauberflöte,
and
Die
Entführung aus dem Serail,
Verdi’s
Otello
and
Falstaff,
and Debussy’s
Pelléas et Mélisande
.
¹⁶

Along with the German repertoire, Erich Leinsdorf inherited Artur Bodanzky’s
Orfeo ed Euridice
. Young Leinsdorf’s Gluck of January 1940 is markedly faster than Bodanzky’s in the November 26, 1938, broadcast. Where Bodanzky’s tempos are elegiac, Leinsdorf’s, often driven and metronomic, harden the music’s serene figures. As a result, under Leinsdorf, the sky over the Elysian Fields is less clear than the composer desired, the sun less bright. New in 1938, the production was admired for Harry Horner’s sets, Herbert Graf’s direction, and especially the Orfeo of Kerstin Thorborg, who, according to Downes, “achieved the grand simplicity, and by this simplicity and grandeur deeply moved her listeners” (
Times,
Nov. 27, 1938). As we hear it, the same can be said of her in 1940. Thorborg’s is the ideal voice for Orfeo, solid yet not heavy through the middle of the range where so much of the role lies, deep but not cavernous, reaching the low notes of the character’s noble lamentations without resorting to an emphatic chest register. Walter conducted
Orfeo ed Euridice
in 1941, again with Thorborg. Oscar Thompson summed up the critical consensus: “this was the most noteworthy performance of the score at the opera house since the Toscanini performances [1909–1914]” (
Sun,
Nov. 27). We have no record of Walter’s way with Gluck’s work. And like Toscanini before him, not even the Met’s most prestigious and popular conductor could attract large audiences to this monument.

When it returned at last on December 22, 1937,
Otello
had been out of the repertoire since 1913. The production was the capstone of Giovanni Martinelli’s long career. Lawrence Tibbett was the Iago. Elisabeth Rethberg substituted for the scheduled Desdemona, Eidé Norena. Reviewers targeted Tibbett’s tendency to oversing and overact and the aging voices of Martinelli and Rethberg. The Met released the third of its transmissions of the opera, the 1940
Otello,
in its series “Historic Broadcast Recordings.” Martinelli, even less plush than he had been in the first in 1938, manages nonetheless to reach the full stature of the tragic hero through phrasing and intensity. Here, Tibbett recalibrates his tone to keep pace with Iago’s shifting machinations.
And Rethberg sounds fresher and more engaged than she had in the earlier broadcast. Panizza’s orchestra is, as always, sensitive to the smallest variations of rhythm and dynamics. The opera was revived in 1945–46, 1946–47, and 1948–49, conducted by Szell and Busch. The first Otello of this later run, Wagnerian Torsten Ralf, was insufficiently Italianate, and the second, converted baritone Ramon Vinay (he had recently been in Toscanini’s historic broadcast with the NBC Symphony), was strained by the tessitura. Stella Roman enchanted listeners with her high pianissimos, only to exasperate them with her clunky phrasing; as the other Desdemona, the overparted Licia Albanese dropped the role after one season. Leonard Warren, sumptuous yet nimble, went on to sing more Iagos than anyone in Met history. The opera slumped at the box office.
Otello
would finally be anchored in the public’s affections in January 1955 when Mario Del Monaco was the Moor of Venice and Renata Tebaldi his unfortunate wife.
¹⁷

Like
Otello, Le Nozze di Figaro
had been missing for more than two decades when it reentered the repertoire on February 20, 1940. During the long span, Mozart had been present only in
Don Giovanni,
with some regularity, and
Die Zauberflöte
and
Così fan tutte,
rarely. Reviewers of the February
Le Nozze di Figaro
took issue with Graf’s broad direction, with an interior stage both difficult to negotiate and acoustically inimical, with Rethberg, the Countess, her best years behind her and garishly costumed, and with an ensemble only at dress rehearsal level. But the importance of the occasion was uncontested. Best of all, the audience had a wonderful time at what was still thought of as fare for the cognoscenti. With this production,
Le Nozze di Figaro
became a fixture at the Met. In the 1940s, led first by Panizza, and then most notably by Walter, Busch, and Reiner, it was scheduled in all but two seasons. The principals remained largely unchanged: John Brownlee sang fifty-five Counts out of a possible sixty-two, Pinza and Sayão had a near monopoly on Figaro and Susanna, Jarmila Novotna and Risë Stevens alternated as the lovesick Cherubino, and Eleanor Steber soon became the Countess of choice. Evident in the March 9, 1940, broadcast is the degree to which Panizza’s brisk tempos sustain the hilarity. In contrast, in the broadcast of January 29, 1944, Walter infuses the score with the warmth of his expansive phrasing, both guiding and cosseting the singers. In 1944, Steber, through seamless legato, even articulation of fioritura, and the silvery sound
that identify her as an exemplary practitioner of Mozart, fills the music with the sadness of the wronged wife. Under Walter, Pinza dispenses with buffoonery, Sayão has the time to put a smile in her voice, Novotna to tease out the threads of Cherubino’s adolescent ardor. Only Brownlee, careless in passagework, labored at the top, insufficient in resonance, and deficient in Italian pronunciation, disappoints in both broadcasts.

Kirsten Flagstad was the Leonore both of Bruno Walter’s debut and of the broadcast of the following week. If the soprano is ill at ease with rapidly articulated notes and her high Bs lack her familiar resonance, the beauty and size of her voice and the fullness of her commitment to the heroine’s plight compensate for these shortcomings. René Maison makes palpable the anguish of Florestan, traversing the arduous course of “Gott! Welch Dunkel hier!” with precise and piercing tone. The luxury casting of Alexander Kipnis as Rocco ensures the broad bass line of the ensembles as it does the geniality of the character. In its revival in 1945,
Fidelio
again belonged to Walter, this time in English. The star conductor led a starless and largely inadequate cast. The exception was the Leonore of Regina Resnik. Her performance, as documented in the broadcast, is difficult to reconcile with reviews that find her, in her debut season, unready for so demanding a part. To be sure, she does not possess Flagstad’s tonal mass; on the other hand, her slimmer voice is more responsive to the technical difficulties and dramatic requirements of the role.

For the Met’s very first
Alceste
(Jan. 24, 1941), Rychtarik designed an impressive neoclassical décor, tiers of stairs and imposing Greek columns. Graf’s staging was too often punctuated by tableaus in imitation of temple friezes. The production was to mark the debut of Germaine Lubin, a French dramatic soprano, a Wagnerian, and a great favorite of Hitler’s. Before the war she sang frequently in Germany; during the occupation she maintained close contacts with the Reich. There is ample reason to doubt the candor of her apology, received by Johnson just two months before the premiere of
Alceste
: “I am heartbroken that it is impossible for me for the moment to leave occupied France. Let me hope I will be able to sing at the Metropolitan Opera next season” (
Times
, Jan. 4, 1941). That opportunity lost, there would not be another. Marjorie
Lawrence was the obvious replacement. Lawrence’s early career had been based in Paris, where she and Lubin had often shared roles. In Virgil Thomson’s view, the Australian singer made a decidedly inferior Alceste
(Herald Tribune)
. Rose Bampton stepped in for the indisposed Lawrence in the Saturday broadcast. Bampton makes a strong effect when her beautiful middle register is allowed to shine. But her soprano voice, rebuilt from its contralto origins, has deficits at both ends of the scale, particularly glaring in the score’s best-known aria, “Divinités du Styx.” And lacking sufficient breath to fill out the long phrases with composure, Bampton often comes under stress. Panizza’s direction propels the many scenes of sorrow with welcome energy, and sets bracing tempos for the extended dance sequences. Below average box-office receipts and tepid critical reaction dashed hopes for the rapid return of
Alceste
. Gluck’s demand for a true dramatic soprano was satisfied at the opera’s revival in 1952, in English, for Flagstad’s farewell and, again in English, for the long-overdue debut of Eileen Farrell in 1960.

In 1929, after a lapse of two decades, Don Giovanni resumed his amorous pursuits along Broadway. From then on, Mozart’s
dramma giocoso
would stray no more. In the March 1942 broadcast, Kipnis’s Leporello, inflected by his dark Russian bass, is maddeningly faulty in diction and rhythm; Charles Kullman, the Ottavio, takes extra breaths in key phrases; Novotna’s Elvira is stretched to the limit of her agility and range. Bampton is a secure and incisive Anna, Sayão a refreshingly brazen Zerlina. Pinza’s Giovanni is a memorable match of artist and role, and undoubtedly the enduring foundation for the opera’s popularity at the Met. In fourteen seasons over the span of twenty years, he sang virtually all of the many performances of the work. Under Walter’s direction, the crackling recitatives, passionate arias, and propulsive ensembles of the 1942 broadcast cohere to mark a theatrical event far greater than the sum of its not always perfect parts.

Revived for the first time since 1926, this English-language
Die Zauberflöte
captured the audience once and for all. Rychtarik’s sets combined “the baroque atmosphere of Mozart’s period, the fantastic Egyptian locale of the action and the significance of the drama as a progress from darkness to light.”
Taubman viewed the concept as “sensitive and tasteful” (
Times,
Dec. 12, 1941), Thomson as “dignified, fanciful, and tasty”
(Herald Tribune);
Douglas Watts carped at the “endless changes of scenes”
(News)
. The principals of the broadcast of the following December are an inconsistent lot. Josephine Antoine is a Queen of the Night without an F above high C. Kullman, the Tamino, produces a weak and bleaty top. At times, Novotna’s affecting Pamina finds herself short of breath and obliged to strain for her highest notes; still, she delivers the dialogue not as an opera singer forced to speak, but as an accomplished actress. Brownlee puts over Papageno’s antics in diction so crisp that, for once, the audience gets the jokes. In a heavy Italian accent, and sometimes not quite in the center of the pitch, Pinza floods the listener with the depth and breadth of his voice. In the end, it is Walter who lifts the proceedings to their lofty plane. Without loss to the singspiel’s humor, the themes of virtue and love emerge transcendent.
¹⁸