From a nice Papageno to a functional Wotan is quite a leap. It entails the risk of not only failing in the attempt, but of compromising the voice for what it can do. Singers like Prey and Hüsch refrained altogether; Fischer-Dieskau began the undertaking on records, but went no farther than a resourceful compromise with the Rheingold role. So Goerne earns a tip of the helmet for getting through two concert performances of the Walküre Wotan (toughest  of the three) in January, 2016 and still showing up at Carnegie in February, 2018 in running condition, having meanwhile taken up the Siegfried segment and, I’m sure, meeting many other engagements as well. It is a melding of those 2016 performances, with the Hong Kong Philharmonic in that city’s Cultural Centre Concert Hall, that we hear on the Naxos Walküre.

In this music, Goerne must operate in overdrive most of the time. The wispy pp being of no use here, he must select his full-out option in many passages where give-and-take at in-between volume levels is needed, and though he stays firm against the heavy upper-range demands, his limited color spectrum exacts an exorbitant toll in dull, hollow tone. During the opening stretches of the Act 2 narrative, the voice trembles under the stress of projecting  dramatically charged words at or near the bottom of the Heldenbariton range. Finally, in the sublime “Der Augen leuchtendes Paar” passage of the Farewell, he does locate and sustain something closer to a supported mezza-voce. This is his most successful singing on the set, the closest to something eloquent and affecting. I would like to have heard some of it in Schumann and Brahms.

There are three other singers on the Naxos recording that are worth comment with respect to this subject of the connection between technique and the range of interpretive possibilities.^(I) Both principal sopranos—Melton and Petra Lang, the Brünnhilde—share a strength whose absence I’ve been bemoaning, namely, a musically useful chest register. In Melton’s case, it’s promising at the top of Act 1 to hear lines like “Müde liegt er von Weges Müh’n” or “das Auge nur schloss er” drop down easily to good-sounding middle Cs, or in Act 3 to contact some lower-range firmness for “Nicht sehre dich Sorge um mich,” etc. Unfortunately, this asset doesn’t translate into a well-supported lower midrange (the opening stretch of “Der Männer Sippe” is weak and messy), or into a centered, steady top for the big climaxes. Lang’s set-up is more workable, though it has its peculiarities, first among them that it offers a female counterpart to the kind of tenorial structure that has become progressively more common since WW2—a dark, “covered” lower range, shifting into a narrower, brighter adjustment for the upper fifth. She can blend down into the chest, securing an almost contralto-ish timbre that at moments reminded me of Podles, and with her way of wrapping vowels as if in a thick towel, at others of Mödl—though I doubt with that heavy a calibre of tone. This makes for an impressive Todesverkündigung and, with her strong feel for dramatic declamation, effective participation in the Act 2 exchanges with Wotan. After some chancey moments with the Battle Cry, she gets the top under respectable control, which is the best that can be expected atop this lower adjustment. It cannot open out or sail free.