It’s wonderful that we have Melchior’s Siegfried documented in live performance, especially in the company of such colleagues as Flagstad, Thorborg, and Schorr, and under the exciting leadership of Bodanzky. The Thirties broadcast sound, though, while it conveys most of what’s essential, is undeniably a limitation, so we’re fortunate that extended excerpts from all three acts of Siegfried were recorded by HMV in 1931, in decent monophonic studio sound, originally released here by RCA Victor in an album of twenty 78-rpm sides. Except for Mime’s opening monologue and the Mime/Wanderer Riddle Scene (Heinrich Tessmer and a somewhat fresher Schorr), these extracts are very much centered on Melchior, and even include one passage (Act 3: “Kenntest du mich, kühner Spross?“, with Rudolf Bockelman tremendous as The Wanderer) that is among the Met/Bodanzky’s infuriating cuts. The 78 album ended disappointingly with three sides of the final scene, with the great but dimly-recorded Frida Leider as Brünnhilde and  Rudolf Laubenthal stepping in (and, inevitably, down) for Melchior. However, Melchior did record the final scene separately, with Florence Easton—at moments lacking the ideal weight and betraying the occasional Americanism, but bright- and fresh-voiced and lyrically expressive—as Brünnhilde. This version of the scene is complete, opening the big Met cut (from the Sehr mässig marking after Siegfried’s “birg meinen Muth mir nicht mehr!” to the Schnell indication for Brunnhilde’s “Kein Gott nahte mir je!” ), thus giving us our only chance to hear Melchior in this important passage, and bringing us the voices in more immediate studio sonics. It was incorporated into later releases of the HMV-Victor excerpts. These records are a valuable supplement to any of the complete Siegfrieds, and belong in any Wagnerite’s collection.

There are three tenors yet to account for on my selected live historical performances, all younger than Melchior (b. 1890). I’ll take them in birthdate progression. (N. B.: I am going to bypass Ludwig Suthaus, the Siegfried of the Rome/Furtwängler performance. He was a dedicated artist with a substantial voice, and Furtwängler’s tenor on important recordings of Tristan and Die Walküre. But his timbre, not merely dark but opaque and joyless, was almost uniquely unsuited to this role, at least as recorded. And, as I noted with respect to conductors and orchestras, Furtwängler performances, even more than most, need to be taken at full stretch, which, for present purposes, I haven’t done.)

Max Lorenz (b. 1902) had a distinguished career that endured from the late 1920s into the early 1950s. Once Melchior took his leave of Bayreuth after 1935, Lorenz was Europe’s leading Heldentenor till the advent of Windgassen, with only Torsten Ralf (admired chiefly in the Jugendlich parts) and, by the ’40s, Svanholm as serious competition. He had somewhat less success here in the U.S. in the early 1930s, his voice being heard as “hard, unyielding,” or as on the light side for the heavier roles. He returned to the Met briefly after the war, no longer in his prime but esteemed as Herod. One hears something of a quality that could be described as “hard, unyielding” on some of his recordings, but there is a great deal more to his singing than that. His vocal set-up is closer to what we would think of as that of a “normal” good dramatic tenor, not gathered in at the passaggio in Melchior’s unusual manner, but also neither raw and open nor unduly “covered.” So while it could not yield the Dane’s meaty brilliance of tone or his “turned-in” mezza-voce shadings, it was in excellent balance, and took on a healthy ring higher up. Unlike Melchior, he was able to retain some of his higher-lying non-Wagnerian roles in the latter half of his career, singing Otello and even the Ballo Riccardo in Vienna during the war, and Bacchus in the famous Happy-80th-Birthday-Richard-Strauss Ariadne of 1944. Early studio recordings of selections from (e. g.) Lohengrin and Aïda show him maintaining an even, well-supported legato line.