Technical considerations must have also figured into the second barrier to unconditional Roswaenge surrender, and that is his sometimes fiendishly piercing “i” and “e” vowels, which I take as a blend of three ingredients: the aesthetic (a persistent search for tonal brilliance); the dramatic (very few leading tenors are so inclined to “acting with the voice,” to the point of sacrificing line and beauty to character inflection and word-oriented declamation) ^(I); and the technical (the use of these vowels to keep the emission lean and unweighted—”cleaning the cords,” as some singers say). I have not undertaken a detailed chronological examination of this Tonfarben lopsidedness (the “a” and the darker vowels remain well-formed and “natural”), but my distinct impression is that it became more extreme with the passage of time, and with translated texts as exposed to those originally set in German—at least, I am more bothered by it in, e. g., his Traviata, Rigoletto, or Faust recordings than with his magnificent Bacchus or the famous Florestan aria.  And I still cannot help thinking that the times left their mark. It’s speculative, and I don’t wish to make unfair accusatory remarks, but: Roswaenge had a childhood in Denmark next door to Imperial Germany, then a Weimar youth and a Third Reich middle age with a hectoring meanness in the air, glorified by many. His profession entailed appealing to his public, and while some performers were resistant (I recently wrote of Frida Leider and Herbert Janssen), many were caught up, if not politically (justly or not, Roswaenge underwent a de-Nazification exile after 1945), but, I submit, artistically.

But I was speaking of a great tenor and an intriguing northerly Ballo. The less appealing moments in Roswaenge’s work emerge in harsh little exchanges with Oscar or René/Renato or explosive bits of declamation. Most are à propos in character terms (the aesthetic sacrificed to the dramatic), culminating in great plosive heaves from G to A to B-flat as Richard, Graf von Warwich, passes from the scene. (However, the score’s instruction does read “fa un ultimo sforzo, e grida” and a piacere, and one likes to think it was the vocal component of a convincingly acted Death Moment.) If we allow that many of our favorite Richard moments are going to engender a bit of culture shock, and listen along with his specificity of intent, there’s a wealth of passion and expertise to be heard in Roswaenge’s performance, even beyond the filling out of the great lyrical moments. I cannot think of another tenor of comparable calibration (though Völker and Kónya suggest it) who could treat the comique-like songs of the first two scenes with this kind of zip, wit, and charm—much the same wit and charm we hear in the Postillon von Longjumeau tale, but here projected much lower in the voice. And charm is important. Liberal policies aside, if we don’t hear a lovability and openness in the King’s personality (and of the three best Riccardos I’ve seen—Bergonzi, Domingo, and Pavarotti—only the last revealed much of it) we have a hard time understanding why his people, foremost among them Amelia, feel so warmly toward him, and why we should. Of course, Roswaenge’s smiling operetta lightness doesn’t sound like Auber or Offenbach—it’s more J. Strauss or Lehár. And there’s our star-to-adoring-compatriots connection, to which we either buy in or don’t.