With my apologies for the extra day’s delay:
Two of the most luminous stars in the constellation of interwar Wagnerian singers, soprano Frida Leider and baritone Herbert Janssen, have recently been given significant recorded attention. We (especially we Americans, I suspect) tend to think of them as belonging to successive though overlapping generations, inasmuch as Leider last sang here in 1934 and was obliged to curtail her operatic activities on the eve of WW2, whereas Janssen sang on into the 1950s, based at the Metropolitan. But they were born only four years apart (Leider in 1888, Janssen in 1892—not 1895, as given in at least one source) and in their prime singing years crossed paths repeatedly, principally in Berlin and London. Both would easily dominate their respective vocal categories today. Leider is, at least nominally, the center of attention on an Immortal Performances release that, in that label’s fashion, incorporates as much as can be stitched together of her Isolde, built up from surviving portions of a Met broadcast of March, 1933 (thus, the earliest “live” Leider we have), filled in with stretches from an unpublished broadcast of 1936, with these sources restored as much as possible and other materials (studio recordings) sequenced in and sonically matched to them where feasible. Janssen’s case is much less complicated: he is the subject of a six-CD set from Marston that contains a wealth of his recorded work in both opera and Lieder, most of it in-studio but some broadcast-derived, from 1927 to 1947.
Leider made her debut as Venus at Halle in 1915, and thus at the relatively late age of 27. She rather beat her way through the bushes in houses (Rostock, Königsberg) where rehearsal and production standards were by her own account deplorable but where she did, from the start, sing leading roles, until landing at the Hamburg Staatsoper (1920), where her artistic identity seems to have jelled. After a guest Isolde in Berlin, she joined the Staatsoper there in 1923, remaining as a principal soprano until 1938. Her international breakthrough came in 1924 with a Ring cycle under Bruno Walter at Covent Garden, whereto she was to return, a great favorite with audiences and critics, until (again) 1938. She first sang at the Bayreuth Festival in 1928, and then from 1933 to, yes, 1938. During these years she made guest appearances at La Scala, the Vienna State Opera, and other leading European houses as well as the Colon; in the U. S., she sang four seasons (1928-32) in Chicago and, frustratingly, only two (1932-34) at the Metropolitan. It was a great career, but—as with so many singers of that time, including Janssen—one much influenced and limited by the twin catastrophes of the Third Reich and the Great Depression. Her operatic appearances ceased in 1938, when her Jewish husband (Rudolf Deman, who had been concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic) was forced to flee to Switzerland for the duration.
Leider recorded extensively, starting with Grammophon/Polydor acousticals in her Hamburg and early Berlin days, and after 1927 with electricals for HMV/RCA Victor. In terms of repertoire, the recordings reflect her stage career quite faithfully, with liberal sprinklings of Mozart, Verdi, and Puccini in amongst her Wagner and other German offerings in the early years, narrowing to almost exclusively Wagnerian selections later. She did a number of acoustical/electrical remakes, e. g., the Fidelio aria and Donna Anna’s vengeance aria, first in German, then in Italian—these were roles that, along with the Marschallin and Rachel in La Juive, she retained as late as her Chicago seasons. During WW2, though operatically inactive, she made some Lieder recordings with the distinguished accompanist Michael Raucheisen.
˜ ˜ ˜
All singers we would grade as superior strive for a sustained legato, elasticity of movement, control of dynamics, etc., and since these attributes were first declared aesthetically necessary by Italian pedagogues, all good singing in the Western classical tradition can be broadly termed “Italian.” Yet if I had to choose one characteristic that might set off Leider’s voice and singing from those of other great Wagnerian sopranos, it would probably be an especially Italianate quality of tone and of guidance, specifically with respect to vibrato. Among Wagnerian sopranos of whom recorded evidence provides a reasonable basis for comparison (I), perhaps Leider’s contemporary Helene Wildbrunn (b. 1892) is the most closely comparable. Her voice was evidently more massive than Leider’s (her records, good late acousticals from the same years as Leider’s earliest ones, give us strong hints of that), and more substantial in the low range (she’d begun as a contralto). But we also hear much of the same continuity of firm positional engagement on the line, and of distinctly vibrated tone, that we hear in Leider’s singing. Still, any comparison of the two will disclose a more consistent sense of “riding the vibrato” (as if the aliveness of the tone were itself impelling the line forward), along with a greater pliancy in the shaping of phrases, in Leider’s singing. Though both instruments are of heavy calibration and both under excellent technical control, we’d say that of the two, Leider’s makes the more lyrical impression. And if we listen alternately to Leider and her great immediate successor Kirsten Flagstad—whose voice was marked by such a unique ease of voluminosity, and certainly did not lack in continuity of legato—I think we’d hear Leider’s as the livelier sound, more eager to arrive at its destination, irrespective of tempo.
Footnotes
| ↑I | Which requirement leaves aside such earlier singers as Lilli Lehmann, Lillian Nordica, and Olive Fremstad, though their recordings are nonetheless valuable for what they convey. Even the indubitably masterly Johanna Gadski, whose career extended later and who did leave us many sides recorded in her prime years, is a difficult match with Leider. Not only do many of her musical choices define her as belonging to an earlier school stylistically, but even the latest of her records (1917) do not allow us to confidently assess the real-life effect of her “pure” (read “straight”) high Bs and Cs, secure though they be. |
|---|