First, a corrective note: A. J. Klein has kindly written to note that in the Lohengrin performance I characterized as complete except for the usually cut extension to “In fernem Land“—“unless I missed a cut”—I did indeed miss one: the entire Act 3 passage beginning with Lohengrin’s “O, Elsa! Was hast du mir angethan!” through the extended ensemble that follows and Lohengrin’s prediction of victory over “the Eastern hordes.” It’s not an uncommon excision—marked “VI–DE” in my vocal score—but Mr. Klein is entirely right that the passage is both musically and dramatically significant, and belongs in the opera. My thanks to him, and my apologies for succumbing to daze.    

I promised in Part 1 of this article to give attention to the Met broadcast of Dec. 21, 1935. It is one of three prewar transmissions from that source that are worth hearing, especially in relation to what it is possible to hear today. One is the performance I referred to in Part 1, in which Rethberg is the Elsa. That’s from January of 1940, and Rethberg’s colleagues are Kerstin Thorborg, Lauritz Melchior, Julius Huehn, Emmanuel List, and Leonard Warren (as The Herald), under Erich Leinsdorf. Another is from March of 1937, when Flagstad sang Elsa, Karin Branzell Ortrud, René Maison Lohengrin, Huehn (again) Telramund, and Ludwig Hofmann the King, with Maurice Abravanel conducting. I’ll allude to them for the things that seem special about them. The 1935 cast: Lotte Lehmann, Marjorie Lawrence, Melchior, Friedrich Schorr, and List, under Artur Bodanzky. I’ll focus on it despite some serious flaws (and the least satisfactory sound of the three), because when it’s special, it’s the most special of all.

Let me get the complaints out of the way first. From the moment Bodanzky arrived in New York in 1915 to assume leadership of the Metropolitan’s German wing (there was such a thing then), he declared his intention to cut anything that seemed to bore his audience. He must have been acutely aware that he was now conducting for an American audience, and perhaps that New York’s demographics had been shifting away from the proportions that had not long before made all-German-language seasons feasible. So he adopted a policy of significant redactions in the works under his jurisdiction, and these remained in effect until his death in 1939. It may also be that starting in the ’30s the Saturday matinees, from which the broadcasts emanate, were cut more heavily than other performances because of the evening performances to follow. In any event, in the Lohengrins I’m speaking of, Scenes 3 and 4 of Act 2 are ground into hash, and Scene 3 of Act 3 (the opera’s finale) cuts to the chase in an all-too-literal sense. While in many important passages (e.g., the Prelude, the first two scenes of Act 2, and the scene I’m about to examine) his leadership has a definition of musical profile and tautness of dramatic tension that few others equal, in others (the aforementioned Act 2 sequences, or the maniacal sprint through the Act 3 Prelude) one feels a lack of patience with the formalities of the score, so that the music does not unfold with the necessary sense of inevitability. The choral work is scrappy and poorly conveyed by the recording. Cuts and conducting taken together, does the opera still play? Yes, but we are cheated of its full impact. Vocally, too, there are disappointments. List has just the right sort of voice for Heinrich—a roomy true bass, impressive at both ends—but with everything between, except for the few softer, solicitous phrases, afflicted with shakiness. In Act 1, we are at points made painfully aware that the great Schorr’s time with this high-lying role has really elapsed. (Fortunately, he somehow pulls things together for the big Act 2 scene with Ortrud.) Finally, Melchior, distantly positioned, does not sound comfortable at the outset. Relative to what we hear today, these are First-World problems, but important, nonetheless.

Luckily, the crucial two-character scenes come across much better on this broadcast than the congested choral ones, and receive the most caring treatment. Important as the first two of Act 2 are (Ortrud/Telramund, Elsa/Ortrud), The Bridal Chamber Scene marks the opera’s turning point, the juncture at which what is most often taken as its central theme, “trust,” meets its moment of tragic failure. And splendid as the nearly complete Melchior/Bettendorf studio recording cited in Part 1 is, the combination of Lehmann, Melchior, and Bodanzky in live performance transcends it (or any other I know) by a substantial margin. Before I talk about why, I’m going to take a few moments with the scene itself. Structurally, it breaks down into five parts, plus a postlude, crafted by the creator into a throughwritten scene of cumulatively quickened pace and heightened emotional tension. But to trace its psychological progression, we must start with the characters’ state of mind at the outset.