I mentioned Rethberg, and this is as good a place as any to make sure she is not overlooked, for she was one of the greatest sopranos of the first half of the 20th Century, and Elsa one of her most characteristic roles. Like so many sopranos of her time (including Lehmann and Müller), she made her professional debut early (age 21) and was essaying leading roles in important houses while still quite young. She had access to sopracuti in her earlier years (she was still taking on Respighi’s Rautendelein in her mid thirties), but the easy power and unblemished purity of her voice’s timbre gave her access to both lyric and dramatic roles in all branches of the repertoire. We can hear her Elsa on a 1940 Met aircheck, and one recognizes immediately a distinguished artist with plenty of voice to call on, but some intonational problems and slight irregularities as well. So while I would certainly not dissuade you from that (and would urge you to hear the ’39 Boccanegra broadcast and the ’36 La Juive Act 2 from San Francisco), for an idea of her Elsa in prime form I would recommend her 1927/28 recordings of the “Einsam in trüben Tagen” and “Euch Lüften.” The first is marked by an unusual boldness of profile, the voice leaping eagerly out at the vision, and the second by a perfect balance and control of the softer dynamics. Of all the named sopranos contending over Elsa and kin at the Met through the ’20s and early ’30s, she was the best endowed in purely vocal terms—that is, with our basic qualities of  power and beauty, augmented by a classical musicality and stylistic sensibility.

Before leaving the 1920s, we have two more versions of the Bridal Chamber Scene to consider, those of Max Lorenz with Käte Heidersbach and Lauritz Melchior with Emmy Bettendorf. They are both estimable, but I shall give them comparatively short shrift, for reasons I’ll state. Lorenz, his voice as yet unburdened with all the Siegfrieds and Tristans he was soon to undertake (to fine effect), sings extremely well, the tone fresh, strong, and clean, the style and language well in hand, and Heidersbach is the lightest, most kittenish of all our sopranos—almost a soubrette Elsa, and within that frame charming and alert. But they are in a desperate hurry to cram everything in through Elsa’s “fur dich wollt’ich zum Tode gehn!” onto two 78-rpm sides, the second of which thus concludes with a little orchestral feint in place of one of Lohengrin’s increasingly helpless interjections (“Geliebte!“). We hear them sneaking in all the interpretive inflections at their disposal, but at a fast-forward pace that obliges them to elide not only many of those breath commas but written rests as well, and gives the whole affair a rather jolly air. Melchior/Bettendorf is quite another matter. Spread over five sides, it was the only complete version available for many years, extending through Lohengrin’s instructions to the Ladies in Waiting and making only the internal cut in “Höchstes Vertraun.” A complete Bridal Chamber Scene with Melchior in youthful, freest estate requires no further advertisement, but in light of the live performance with Lehmann I will be examining next time, it also needs no close inspection. A word, though, about Bettendorf: she has a beautiful voice whose calibre I would place between Heidersbach’s and Lehmann’s, and a technique whose devotion to Kopfstimme in the upper-middle range has her scrapping in the excitable latter part of the scene, till she clears away to nail the A and B naturals at the end. She recorded an “Euch lüften” that stands as a model among lighter-voiced versions for sincerity of feeling and tracing of the line—that perfectly positioned final “In Liebe!“, pp on the upper F, will, I predict, melt any resistance you may feel.