In Opera as Opera, I trace the emergence of this type of baritone (and its relationship to what has happened in other vocal categories) since WW2, a progression that has led to a voice like Thomas Hampson’s being deemed appropriate for Verdi baritone parts (and, not incidentally, for Don Giovanni). Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau undoubtedly exerted a major influence, though many of the exemplars of this type have been Scandinavian. Before the war, this texture, heady and silken, was almost never encountered in an operatic context. Even the exemplars among Lieder recitalists sang with more of what we would hear as an operatic voice being used with restraint, its louder dynamics retaining a core, its softer ones a tensility, a dramatic potential. ^(I) Those qualities are what’s missing in the latterday lyric baritone type, of which we heard a top-of-the-line version, Peter Mattei, in the La Scala performance, and encounter a lesser example here. It isn’t that Dimitri Tiliakos is not a capable singer. He traverses the role without mishap, and must be conceded some leeway for the regimen he’s under. He can puff up the pop crooner structure to get some presence when needed. But while there’s a soft-to-louder continuum to the voice there is no color span, no prism to play with (a limitation that runs through the cast, as if the ornamental and prismatic were mutually exclusive). Higher voice or lower, more lyrical or more dramatic in temperament—there’s a wide range of expression open for the title role. But for the fatally seductive, death-defiant amoralist of unlimited appetite who must anchor a complex masterwork without a formal aria to work with, it’s not enough to sing nice.

After a few hours with Currentzis, et al., the shock of the old makes itself felt within the first  few minutes of Glyndebourne ’36. I wonder what impression young inhabitants of our operatic Zeitgeist might have upon introduction to it. WARNING: not an appoggiatura from beginning to end, even in spots where a no-rules, informed-singer’s-instinct believer like myself would find it a near necessity. And after urging some consideration for the use of the modern piano in recitative in reaction to the live, crisp chords of the Met performance, I’m forced to retract upon hearing the limp, woody plunkings of this one, which cast a pall the singers have to repeatedly lift for a scene to begin to take place.

In some of Fritz Busch’s live operatic tracings, there is a pushing of tempo, a drive for excitement. (One friend of mine, having just heard Busch’s Met Otello, said it was a relief to return to the measured tempi and calm phrasing of Arturo Toscanini.) But here, in the studio and with Mozart (Busch also leads the Glyndebourne Così and Nozze di Figaro of the same era, other first-ever integral recordings), things are quite different. The opening of the overture is grave, strong but contained (that wonderful C# in the lower strings, held a beat longer than the rest of the chord higher up, is firm, but not leaned into and extended, as with Walter), and the allegro proceeds at a lively pace and with a vigorous, but not slashing, address. The sound is that of the symphony orchestra as developed through Romantic ears. And yes, we don’t get all the detail of Currentzis with his band, partly because we’re hearing a monophonic recording, but mostly because the governing aesthetic inclines more to unification than to articulation, more to a bonding into a single, deep sound than into a laying-out of elements. A balanced texture, with the key elements, not contributory ones, always to the fore, is the point.