Ms. Kuchta is not only the real thing, but she has such a youthful sounding instrument for a dramatic soprano of 53!! And what a surprise is Maazel! THANKS FOR SHARING!
Thank you for posting this. I was at the Bayreuth Ring in 1968. Frankly Windgassen was well past his prime by then. I seem to recall feeling that he nursed himself through the first two acts and saved everything for the death scene in Act 3. I thought Maazel was absolutely one of the best although he wasn't that well received at the time. Overall the Ring Cycle was uneven. I recall Thomas Stewart as a wonderful Wotan and Richard Martell as Siegmund impressed. Walkure went well, I will never forget Thomas Stewarts's dignified walk from the stage at the end. Maazel appeared on stage alone to take a call after Walkure was over. Siegfried was a fright. Ticho Parly simply couldn't make it and Berit Lindholm was pretty dire: she stopped the final note as though she had been shot by the conductor. Josef Greindl as the Wanderer was just painful to hear and little better to watch. We were staying at the same hotel as Maazel: the excellent Pflaum's Post Hotel at Pegnitz. He was back at the hotel after Siegfried before we were!! We went into late supper and our waiter (Willi as I recall) came over very quietly and whispered "It was not good in Bayreuth tonight, no?" It seems Maazel had returned to the hotel in a simply dreadful temper and all the staff were walking on eggshells! What memories that clip has sparked!! I wonder if the impressions of so many years ago would be borne out by hearing the whole thing again?
Hm, I quite enjoyed Lindholm on the 1970 cycle. Maybe she just needed a few years to warm up to the role? Greindl as the Wanderer sounds like the Wagners desperately clinging to their '50s regulars. Uhde would have at least been a slightly better fit. Was he no longer viable by that point? Thanks for the fascinating memories btw.
I’d take the 54 year old Windgassen in a heartbeat over anyone trying to sing this music today. No wobble in THIS voice in 1968. In the final analysis, he and Melchior were the most successful Wagnerian tenors. Both sang magnificently and often in Tristan and Siegfried in the opera “Siegfried”, the two most difficult roles in all of opera for a tenor. All recordings bear this out including the Tristan with Flagstad & Melchior from Covent Garden, and the (completely uncut) Tristan with Nilsson & Windgassen from Bayreuth 1966. There’s also a live 1967 video of them in good sound but bad video from Osaka. You cannot succeed in Wagner with a swallowed, wobbly, strained/forced voice. You’ll humiliate yourself trying. Many recordings bear THAT out also. Lorenz, Svanholm, Jess Thomas all got unsteady. Vickers didn’t get unsteady but he sang Tristan rarely, and always with cuts. He was smart enough to never even try a Siegfried. His Tristan was too croony and can’t compare to WW or LM. Ben Heppner did many Tristans and his voice was steady, but he cracked on high notes regularly.
RANDY WOLFGANG Sadly, in 1968 or 1970 casting the great Uhde was indeed no longer viable. In October of 1965 he suffered the same (tragic but glorious, in my opinion) fate as Warren did in March of 1960. Warren died on the stage of the Met at age 47, and Uhde died on the stage of the Royal Danish Opera at age 51. Uhde is hands-down my top favorite Dutchman (and my least favorite Grand Inquisitor). .
I lucked into a single ticket for that Ring cycle and shared it with my traveling companion. I took the first two operas and he took the other two. I was surprised to hear Maazel booed and astonished to hear someone explain "We don't like his wife." Back in Munich, I told the other regulars in the Staatsoper's standing room I didn't think he deserved such treatment, and a young German woman sniped "You must like Schick razor blades." His wife at the time, the first of three, was apparently an heiress to that family's fortune, which hardly seems something you take out on a conductor. I can only guess that the Festival musicians, an unusually tight-knit bunch, may have decided the maestro's wife had gotten a little too big for her dirndl, and gossip like that spreads like wildfire. Still, it does sound like things went awry in the two operas I missed. Finally, since we're talking about The Mists of Antiquity here, I checked the cast list online to make sure I remembered correctly that Theo Adam was the Wotan I heard in DW. Did he alternate with Stewart in the part, or was there a second Cycle that summer with TS donning the eyepatch? BTW, that same trip I was in the Staatsoper the night Joseph Keilberth collapsed while conducting the second act of Tristan--my least favorite opera memory. He died a few hours later and that night's performance of "Figaros Hochzeit" was given in his memory. The three ladies were Claire Watson, Ingeborg Hallstein, and a young Brigitte Fassbaender the most perfect Cherubino imaginable. (Sorry, Flicka!)
![โรงเรียนห้ามรัก โดนจับได้ตาย...!! [เอิร์นไดเม่]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4u02Sbr556Q/mqdefault.jpg)
Thank you for another Windgassen's Siegfried, always a pleasure.
Thank you for this.
Ms. Kuchta is not only the real thing, but she has such a youthful sounding instrument for a dramatic soprano of 53!! And what a surprise is Maazel! THANKS FOR SHARING!
WIELAND
Thank you for posting this. I was at the Bayreuth Ring in 1968. Frankly Windgassen was well past his prime by then. I seem to recall feeling that he nursed himself through the first two acts and saved everything for the death scene in Act 3. I thought Maazel was absolutely one of the best although he wasn't that well received at the time. Overall the Ring Cycle was uneven. I recall Thomas Stewart as a wonderful Wotan and Richard Martell as Siegmund impressed. Walkure went well, I will never forget Thomas Stewarts's dignified walk from the stage at the end. Maazel appeared on stage alone to take a call after Walkure was over. Siegfried was a fright. Ticho Parly simply couldn't make it and Berit Lindholm was pretty dire: she stopped the final note as though she had been shot by the conductor. Josef Greindl as the Wanderer was just painful to hear and little better to watch. We were staying at the same hotel as Maazel: the excellent Pflaum's Post Hotel at Pegnitz. He was back at the hotel after Siegfried before we were!! We went into late supper and our waiter (Willi as I recall) came over very quietly and whispered "It was not good in Bayreuth tonight, no?" It seems Maazel had returned to the hotel in a simply dreadful temper and all the staff were walking on eggshells!
What memories that clip has sparked!! I wonder if the impressions of so many years ago would be borne out by hearing the whole thing again?
Hm, I quite enjoyed Lindholm on the 1970 cycle. Maybe she just needed a few years to warm up to the role? Greindl as the Wanderer sounds like the Wagners desperately clinging to their '50s regulars. Uhde would have at least been a slightly better fit. Was he no longer viable by that point? Thanks for the fascinating memories btw.
I’d take the 54 year old Windgassen in a heartbeat over anyone trying to sing this music today. No wobble in THIS voice in 1968. In the final analysis, he and Melchior were the most successful Wagnerian tenors. Both sang magnificently and often in Tristan and Siegfried in the opera “Siegfried”, the two most difficult roles in all of opera for a tenor. All recordings bear this out including the Tristan with Flagstad & Melchior from Covent Garden, and the (completely uncut) Tristan with Nilsson & Windgassen from Bayreuth 1966. There’s also a live 1967 video of them in good sound but bad video from Osaka.
You cannot succeed in Wagner with a swallowed, wobbly, strained/forced voice. You’ll humiliate yourself trying. Many recordings bear THAT out also. Lorenz, Svanholm, Jess Thomas all got unsteady. Vickers didn’t get unsteady but he sang Tristan rarely, and always with cuts. He was smart enough to never even try a Siegfried. His Tristan was too croony and can’t compare to WW or LM. Ben Heppner did many Tristans and his voice was steady, but he cracked on high notes regularly.
Uhde was longer viable at that point because he was dead
RANDY WOLFGANG Sadly, in 1968 or 1970 casting the great Uhde was indeed no longer viable. In October of 1965 he suffered the same (tragic but glorious, in my opinion) fate as Warren did in March of 1960. Warren died on the stage of the Met at age 47, and Uhde died on the stage of the Royal Danish Opera at age 51. Uhde is hands-down my top favorite Dutchman (and my least favorite Grand Inquisitor).
.
I lucked into a single ticket for that Ring cycle and shared it with my traveling companion. I took the first two operas and he took the other two. I was surprised to hear Maazel booed and astonished to hear someone explain "We don't like his wife." Back in Munich, I told the other regulars in the Staatsoper's standing room I didn't think he deserved such treatment, and a young German woman sniped "You must like Schick razor blades." His wife at the time, the first of three, was apparently an heiress to that family's fortune, which hardly seems something you take out on a conductor. I can only guess that the Festival musicians, an unusually tight-knit bunch, may have decided the maestro's wife had gotten a little too big for her dirndl, and gossip like that spreads like wildfire. Still, it does sound like things went awry in the two operas I missed. Finally, since we're talking about The Mists of Antiquity here, I checked the cast list online to make sure I remembered correctly that Theo Adam was the Wotan I heard in DW. Did he alternate with Stewart in the part, or was there a second Cycle that summer with TS donning the eyepatch? BTW, that same trip I was in the Staatsoper the night Joseph Keilberth collapsed while conducting the second act of Tristan--my least favorite opera memory. He died a few hours later and that night's performance of "Figaros Hochzeit" was given in his memory. The three ladies were Claire Watson, Ingeborg Hallstein, and a young Brigitte Fassbaender the most perfect Cherubino imaginable. (Sorry, Flicka!)