To close, there is Wotan’s Farewell, with the NYPO under Rodzinski. This is not from the complete Act 3 with Traubel, Irene Jessner, et al. that Columbia recorded in the studio, but from a Carnegie Hall concert of 11/12/45, with substantially the same forces. Of all the lower Heldenbariton parts, the Walküre Wotan is the most challenging for a voice of Janssen’s calibration. A performance of 12/2/44 under Szell, released in the Met’s series, documents his work in the role, and there is no use pretending that the depths of the Act 2 narrative or the great outbursts of Act 3 are ideally met with. Still, it is surprising how much of the part emerges not only intact but satisfyingly, and with more overt dramatic engagement than we sometimes get from Janssen. That is true of this Abschied, and as we would expect, truest in its center section, “Der Augen leuchtendes Paar.”

Herbert Janssen may or may not have been pushed by his parlous times in a direction he would not have taken in a more orderly world, but in any case he answered the call and served his art with dedication to the end. He owns a generous share of his generation’s still-towering legacy of Wagnerian performance.

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NEXT TIME: The final month of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2022-2023 season brings new productions of two Mozart masterworks, Don Giovanni and Die Zauberflöte. We’ll see what we make of one, or the other, or both. I am giving myself until Friday, June 23, to file my report.

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