It is a great pity that the E. Kleiber/Colon Siegfried recording does not incorporate the latter part of Act 2 or anything of Act 3; a shame, also, that its upper frequencies are attenuated, so that all those high A’s in the Forging Song are robbed of what must have been their considerable effect. Again, studio versions are of some help, for in 1936 Lorenz recorded both parts of the Forging Song and the Waldweben sequence, with the Bayreuth Festival orchestra under Heinz Tietjen.^(I) These sides are notable for neither their engineering nor the dull-sounding conducting, but they do give us Lorenz’s voice with much greater presence and balance. It’s obvious from all these extracts that though Lorenz, like everyone else, wasn’t Melchior, he was very good—sturdy of voice, musically alert, and quite touchingly expressive in the Waldweben.

As previously noted, Set Svanholm (b. 1904) began professional singing as Melchior did, as a baritone. While (as also already noted) in terms of color and heft I don’t pick up much of the baritonal in his voice, I do hear a solid, strong lower range. (And, digressing for a moment to think of our current Siegfried, Andreas Schager, I reflect on Melchior’s belief that the Hochdramatisch tenor voice is best built from baritonal beginnings, whereas Schager has emerged from a start in operetta,  giving him good upper-range access and a pleasing quality when not under pressure, but the midrange shakes I spoke of last time in the more stressful, excitable passages—in this naturally more relaxed tessitura, the voice doesn’t quite hold firm against this unaccustomed application of energy.) Svanholm was famous in this role, with which he debuted at the Met in 1946 and sang (both younger and older S.) in the Met/Stiedry cycle of 1951. His tone is bright and strong, his musicianship and ear for effect sharp, and he survives the final duet in better form for Stiedry than he had for Furtwängler at La Scala, where things get quite desperate some distance from the finish line. His technical flaw in approaching this repertory is signaled by all those overly open “a” vowels (and the occasional open “e“) on the upper G-flats, G-naturals, and even some A-flats, against which he was obliged to drive the voice in more energetic passages, since he did not have Melchior’s “shut in the head, anchored in the chest” structure. Evidently, his baritone-to-tenor transition, though successful in career terms, had not quite integrated the upper register into his voice to the necessary degree. This had the effect, over just a few years, of pushing the passaggio farther and farther up, so that even the highest notes lost their gathered ring, and the entire upper range became parched and hard to sustain. It also, I think, accounts for his habit of bumping many attacks from just below the pitch, often annoying to hear. This progression is still manageable in 1951, but we can hear it happening. Once again, a studio recording represents one of our tenors more favorably, for Svanholm recorded the final scene of Siegfried just around this time, with Eileen Farrell on what I believe was her first extended Wagnerian excursion, and is on his best vocal form.