From the end of the Liebesnacht through the rest of Act 2, taking in Melchior’s superb “O König,” we seem to have tumbled back to 1933, sonically speaking. But Caniell’s Recording Notes indicate that this is from the ’36 transmission, “sonically degraded” for matching purposes. Though something of a shock following the studio level of the Liebesnacht, this is still more listenable than I would have thought. In Act 3, we continue with the ’36-to-’33-degraded broadcast from the Prelude till the end of Tristan’s first big outburst at “Wann wird es Ruh im Haus?“, with Julius Huehn as Kurwenal. Then, with Kurwenal’s reply (“Der einst ich trotzt,”, etc.), we are returned to ’33 itself till the end of the opera, with the substantial cuts then customary, and with Gustav Schutzendorf repossessing the role of Kurwenal, which he’d sung in the first two acts. Thus, Act 3 is entirely broadcast-derived, with no studio interpolations.

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In “Some Impressions of Frida Leider,” written for another release in the Angel COLH series, Max de Schauensee, longtime music critic of the Philadelphia Bulletin and a keen listener to singing, notes that he’d heard Caruso, Destinn, Chaliapin, Ponselle, and Flagstad, and had no hesitation in placing Leider securely among them. Even Flagstad, he recalls, was unable to dislodge a fond preference for Leider among many devotees, and especially as Isolde. Like most expert listeners who heard Leider live, he cites the craftsmanlike shaping of her characterization, an intellectual grasp of the role that did not preclude a “thrilling spontaneity.” He also relates that after being swept away by her Isolde in Paris in 1931, he found that in her Met appearances she was not quite able to meet the same standard. And that is surely credible. We must also remind ourselves that of Leider’s Isolde as heard on the IM release, over half is actually from studio sources (degraded or not) dating from three or four years earlier. Nonetheless, we know from the much-circulated Covent Garden Götterdämmerung discs of 1936-38 (a complete edition, in sound improved over previous versions, is available on an IM release) that Leider was still singing powerfully and eloquently then. And the observation that there is always an element in live performance that is rarely captured in the studio is true, however exhausted by repetition (the Walküre excerpt discussed earlier being one of the exceptions). For that element, the opera’s closing pages tell us the most. For all the dimness of sound and the annoying little cuts, Leider is wonderful at “Ich bin’s, süssester Freund,” etc., her very sound suggestive of a spirit at once ministering, yet itself mortally wounded. In the Liebestod, there is just the hint of downward tug on the first A-flats, and an instance or two of the vibrato getting a little out of control. But what a moving account! It’s not stately, but pulsing with the struggle for life, not terminally sad but ecstatic in the final reunion. At the end Leider rides over the great surges of Bodanzky’s orchestra, pouring through her beautiful, vibrant tone, and capping the story with a perfectly positioned and sustained F-sharp at “Höchste Lust!“