Once again, the calendar dictates this week's choice of MP3: Lohengrin's farewell, recorded in 1931 by Georges Thill, who was born on 14 December 1897. Update: MP3 no longer available. Be sure to visit vilaine fille early and often!
Lohengrin is the one Wagner opera that I love abjectly and deliriously,* and I have a special fondness for "foreign" Lohengrins. My hands-down favorite: Ivan Kozlovsky, whose surpassingly refined singing creates an uncanny aura of apartness and enchantment about the knight. (I'll post Kozlovsky's narrative sometime soon.) I also admire Aureliano Pertile in this role and dearly wish that Carlo Bergonzi, the greatest of postwar tenors, had sung Lohengrin.
*[I feel the same way about most of the third act of Tristan.]
Anyway, Georges Thill. In The Grand Tradition, Mr. Steane more or less dismisses Thill for his "steady competence," but I find him both elegant and splendidly athletic. As Werther, I prefer Tito Schipa (so fragile and inward, palpably doomed from his first word) and Alfredo Kraus, though I understand the reverence in which Thill's Werther recording is held. Thill's ringing, manly tone, exquisite enunciation, and contained fire make him a very dashing Lohengrin. He really sounds like he could cut down bad guys and rescue maidens, and he also summons considerable tenderness for the repeat of "der einst auch dich aus Schmach und Not befreit" (though he can't match Ben Heppner's melting grace there—no one can).
I *adore* Robert Wilson's Met staging of Lohengrin (saw it a dozen times over two seasons), but Wagner in French feels to me like a Pre-Raphaelite painting: Dante Gabriel Rosetti, Edward Burne-Jones, etc. I would love to see a seriously foofy production of Lohengrin in that style: lots of velvet and crimped hair and coruscating silver; ivy and moss galore; saturated colors and a cramped, suffocating atmosphere, like a Victorian interior. In French, of course. Hélas.
The Wilson staging is reportedly returning in 2005-2006. Please, G-d, let it be James Levine conducting…
Thank you for reminding me of the Bjrling. I hadn't heard it in years, and it is stunning: poetic and devout in the evocation of the Grail, but with big-time cojones* for the more martial bits.
I think I might choose him as my Pre-Raphaelite Lohengrin (well, alternating with Kozlovsky), with de los Angeles as Elsa, Gorr or Simionato (!) as Ortrud, and Pape in whatever the h*ll role he prefers. Since this Lohengrin will never happen, being dead is no obstacle for cast members.
* [I tried to find the Swedish word for "cojones," but instead found this incredibly charming page by a supposed Swedish linguist. Enjoy!]
Posted by: vilaine fille | 19 December 2004 at 15:45
Oh, I am in love with your idea of a pre-Raphaelite "Lohengrin."
I am very fond of Bjoerling in "In fernem Land," which may be heard here, in Swedish, if you scroll down:
http://greatvoices.tripod.com
Posted by: Lisa Hirsch | 19 December 2004 at 07:30