As to Melchior’s overall performance, I don’t think I need expatiate further on his qualities as the best-equipped Tristan we can hear, not only for his purely vocal qualities, but for his dramatic commitment and elocutionary command as well. And we have several more “complete” broadcasts of his Tristan, all in at least somewhat better sound, plus his numerous studio recordings of excerpts, including the then-standard Act 3 to Isolde’s arrival, with Janssen as Kurwenal. What may be worth a few words is his collaboration with Bodanzky in Act 3. David Hamilton had some good clean fun with this, taking up John Steane on his claim that a close hearing of Melchior’s Tristan, score in hand, disclosed only one or two instances of inattentiveness to note values, dynamic markings, tempo, and so on. Well, I think Steane was right to take arms against accusations, prevalent at the time, of habitual artistic slovenliness on Melchior’s part. On the other hand, David was a far keener tracker than Steane, and turns up many an instance of disagreement between L. M. and R. W. on such matters—in Act 3, coming down to almost countless examples of quarters reduced to eighths, dots omitted, and a constant pushing on the tempi. His observations, at least in regard to the note values, are irrefutable; the question is how much they matter to our reception of Melchior’s interpretation and, speculatively, how much they would have mattered to an in-person, in-house experience. I wish I could say something more definitive about the latter. But on the one occasion I saw Melchior in this role, he was old for a Heldentenor and I was young for a listener, experiencing Tristan for the first time in the theatre. So I can report of Act 3 only that I was seized with a feverish excitement during what I would soon learn to label “O diese Sonne!“—the ring of Melchior’s voice slashing through the music, his physical struggle up onto his knees—and that I was stirred by the hopeless defiance of Kurwenal (Ferdinand Frantz) and left limp by Traubel’s Liebestod.

Now I know the music better and have seen a fair number of Tristans in the theatre—and, you may recall, on vidop (see “Regie Auteurs Gone Feral: Two Vidop Tristans,” 9/3/21). So although I constantly remind myself that even with live performances in better sound, I am only orbiting the ear part of an opera, much of the time at quite a remove, I can now undertake a more informed hear-through to what things might have been sounding like in opera-house space. And as I listen, my mind’s eye is always constructing some version of the eye part, the dramatic progression as conveyed by the physical acting, from which, as Leider observed with the Isoldes of Drill-Orridge and Larsen-Todsen, the singing and playing cannot be detached. Above all, I’m hoping to be caught up in the emotional heat of the event, difficult as that can be with such partial signals being sent. This is very different from following the ear part with a score, eyes glued to the symbols on the page and attention keenly focused on their fulfillment. (I’ve done that often myself; it’s simply a different quest that yields different information. Obviously, I’ve referred to the score in listening to this Tristan, mostly to check on the deletions.) Singers have many reasons for cheating note values. Some are vocal: just can’t reach and sustain that high note, running out of breath, etc. Those don’t apply with Melchior. Others are rhetorical, and these crop up often in Wagner, e. g., a short syllable, either a whole word (“springt,” “ist’s,” etc.,) or a final syllable with a consonantal ending (“-andt,” “-lich,” where the accent has fallen on the preceding syllable) is allotted more time by the notation than seems inflectionally natural or effective. Melchior had a keen elocutionary sense in the German language, and that undoubtedly accounts for a dot here, a hemi-semi-demi’d quaver there. Yet others have to do with temperamental excitability, or with simple inattentiveness, and it is into these two categories that at least some of Melchior’s clippings and snippings must be assigned. They certainly aren’t to be condoned, because in the more driven passages they can give an impression of sketchwork, especially against such a partially filled-in background. But of course we weren’t there, were we, to receive the impact of the voice, or how it jibed with what we might have seen, or to calculate how many points we would have deducted against the transcendent effect of his work. As to who is pushing whom between Bodanzky and Melchior in these sections, I’d say it’s about even money, though I should add that the Act 3 Prelude is again a stick-to-the-ribs account, and the whole opening sequence of the act has great gravity.