Word: gotterdammerung
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...vivid Mime in Dutch Tenor Hubert Delamboye, Rochaix gives the conniving dwarf free rein, particularly in Siegfried, where his exchanges with the sturdy Siegfried (American Heldentenor Edward Sooter) have a sharp, often humorous bite. And having Siegfried relate his wooing of Brunnhilde directly to Gunther near the end of Gotterdammerung gives the innocent Siegfried's ensuing murder a special poignancy...
...French conductor and composer who speaks no German and has never commanded a Ring before. Rosenthal leads a symphonic performance noteworthy for its clarity and color. At its best, as in Die Walkure, Rosenthal's view of the score is fluid and graceful; at its worst, as in Gotterdammerung, it is merely glib. "There is too much emphasis on heaviness in the Ring," says the diminutive Rosenthal, who conducted the Seattle Symphony from 1949 to 1951. "I discovered the French side of this music, the fantastic orchestration that I never suspected was there...
Gould's Wagner transcriptions (recorded in 1973), taken from the operas Die Meistersinger and Gotterdammerung, make for fun listening. Gould has added lots of counterpoint to the original orchestral score (in order to play all voices in the Meistersinger Prelude, Gould had to dub one take over another). In Gould's able hands Sibelius's sonatinas (recorded in 1976-7), short, sparsely-written works, receive as good a performance as they are likely ever to have on records...
Vocal quality was high throughout: Tenor Rene Kollo's sturdy Siegfried, Bass- Baritone Walter Berry's crafty Alberich, the ripe Fricka of Mezzo-Soprano Hanna Schwarz in Das Rheingold. A delightful bonus was the Walkure Fricka and Gotterdammerung Waltraute of Vienna-born Mezzo Helga Dernesch, who some years ago was an important Isolde and Brunnhilde. Combining her still considerable power with a riveting dramatic presence, Dernesch gave a lesson in Wagnerian artistry. Conductor Edo de Waart was too often cautious when he should have been impetuous, but he roused himself in Gotterdammerung to deliver a reading of surge and sweep...
Drawing their inspiration from the work of the German romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, the production team of Lehnhoff and Designer John Conklin created an emotionally resonant mythic landscape. The poetic ruin near which Siegfried encounters the Rhinemaidens in Gotterdammerung, for example, was suggested by Friedrich's Winter, and the staging uses other Friedrich images prominently. It was a back-to-nature approach, a middle ground between the conservative 1975 Seattle Ring, which was strongly influenced by Arthur Rackham's 1910-1911 book illustrations, and the experiments at Bayreuth, which included both Chereau's radical vision and Hall's muddled...