Now, I must enter what I guess amounts to a caveat. In his review of the live performance, Allison, though very favorably impressed with Zeppenfeld’s traversal of the role, notes that his voice is on the light side for it, and wonders whether Sachs will really be a part for him going forward. This doesn’t altogether comport with my only live experience of this singer (as Marke in the BSO concert presentation of Act 2 of Tristan at Carnegie Hall—see The “Tristan” Quadrangle: Montemezzi and Wagner, 4/26/18). Then, his voice sat sonorously in the low and rang out commandingly on high. In the middle, there was an unusual lightness of timbre and touch, but no shortfall of intensity. The space was easily filled. Marke, Act 2, is a long distance from Sachs, and Carnegie’s acoustics are friendly; it is quite  conceivable that the length and variety of Sachs’ music might lead a singer to pull back for the sake of keeping in balance and on track. It’s true that the timbral transparency and leanness of Zeppenfeld’s midvoice do not entirely meet the established profile of the Sachses of yore; it has not the richness and complexity of a Schöffler or Hotter, the Heldenbariton solidity of Frantz or Edelmann or Nissen, or the depth and warmth of Schorr. So he presents a different model for the role. But I will be surprised if his tone does not consistently penetrate even the Met’s challenging space, and if plans for the Fall are able to be realized, we will find out—Zeppenfeld is scheduled for Pogner.

So preoccupied was I in Act 1 with the successive disappointments of the singing, along with stray puzzlements about whether or not strange miking and/or postproduction tinkering had not served to flatten everything out (for all the voices seemed to register the same modest presence and to hang in a kind of limbo, in the way one often encounters in the from-the-booth equalizations of Broadway musicals, and  I suspected this was not the real-life case), that I had to remind myself to pay some attention to Thielemann and his forces. It probably doesn’t need saying that he is always in command, getting what he wants from his orchestra and chorus, which rank with the best for this work. His view of the opera is lyrical, atmospheric, and gradualist—I imagine he’d say, “Well, that’s how it’s written.” He lets the piece unfold, without worrying if we might be getting a little impatient. On the whole, that’s fine with me. But at times, it can seem that atmospheric loitering has been favored over keeping things going in this essentially expositional act. Foregoing my prize dropping-the-ball example from James Levine performances (“Merkwurd’ger Fall,” etc.), such moments here might include the opening hymn (these parishioners are certainly the most refined I’ve ever heard and, unlike any I’ve known, not eager for a service to be over) and the ensemble discussion following Walther’s introduction to the Masters (“Der Fall ist neu: Ein ritter gar?“, etc.), which basks contentedly in its aura but does not seem to have an action. Scattered through this reading are some of the most prolonged silences I can remember (e. g., the soft horn triplets leading into “Dem Vogel, der heut sang” in the Fliedermonolog are a l-o-n-g time coming), and at the climax of Pogner’s Address, Kowaljow is vouchsafed an endless top F (again, not something I would normally complain of, except that the reading indicated in my score is to my mind much better: the gradual crescendo building into a broadening on the top E at “wie’s geh und steh;” then the accented chords in the orchestra; then a return to tempo; a quick revelation of “Eva, mein einzig Kind;” then two more chords and a one-beat rhetorical pause for—the clincher—”zur Eh!“) The extended top F for “E-e-va” puts the girl’s name, not the marriage itself, of “my only child,” in position of first importance.