Oddly, Berlin ’38 has become just about my favorite Act 1, Scene 2. This isn’t all Roswaenge, of course. The then-veteran contralto Margarete Arndt-Ober anchors the scene, as the Ulrica must. She is a true contralto, and an excellent one, of the older Northern European, Anglo-American type, as distinct from the brighter, more open and dramatic mezzo-ish Italian kind. This means a deeper, less excitable timbre and a more mixed variety of chest voice, entirely suitable to a mistress of the occult. She sings a sinuous, settled line (listen to “Della città all’occaso,” etc.), capped off by fine sustained top Gs drawn out from piano to forte they way Milanov used to do on her messa di voce high notes. And she’s an alert vocal actress—her “lass’ mich!” as Riccardo presses her for his fate has the sound of a woman genuinely frightened by what she sees. The quintet is marvelous. Roswaenge reaches a peak of light, precise staccato emission and wordplay, the mocking tone somehow also suggesting a whistling-through-the-graveyard subtext. Arndt-Ober fills out her part satisfyingly, and the conspirators and chorus chug along in a way that makes their ostinato-like function clearer than I can remember hearing it. This number also shows how far German radio producers and performers, with the collaboration of a knowledgeable conductor and a good orchestra, had already come with the possibilities of their medium. Soloists, chorus, and orchestra are in perfect balance, and aware of what special advantage could be taken of the microphone—in the final ten bars, ppp except for a brief, quickly contained, outburst, the soloists sound almost like a close harmony group.

The René/Renato, Hans Reinmar, is a potent baritone, with a solidly set voice of striking color. He is a more straightforward interpreter than Roswaenge (and after all, this character, though perfectly written for his dramatic function in the opera, plays the straight man throughout), but handles the “Eri tu” imaginatively, with a well-sustained line and an impressive interplay of full voice and mezza voce; owing to the combination of the German text and Reinmar’s phrasing ideas, the music’s contours emerge in shapes that take some getting used to. Hildegard Ranczak, the Amelia of the ’38 broadcast, has a nice melancholy shine on her soprano, and sings artistically in the beautiful Act 1 trio, but thereafter does not consistently meet the demands of what is truly a dramatic soprano part. (That can’t be done without lower-range strength.) She’s cut off in the middle of her Act 2 aria, and doesn’t return until her husband’s valiant but ill-timed arrival on the scene, the big love duet AWOL. As mentioned earlier, it is present in the ’41/’42 material in the appendix, where the soprano is Hilde Scheppan, much better equipped for the role. Since her recitative and aria are also included, complete, it makes sense to insert her from the start of Act 2, and to do the same with Roswaenge’s aria in Act 3, Scene 2, if you’re working from the CDs.

Our remaining important character is Oscar. He’s sung by Gertrud Callam, a competent light soprano of Northern European type, with an attractive but rather colorless tone that makes its way through the music but can’t dash it off with the spunk it calls for. Her singing of the “Saper vorreste,” though, raises a side issue that merits a moment’s attention. Browsing through some of the Ballo performance literature, I came across Lord Harewood’s assessment in the Metropolitan Opera Guide to Recorded Opera of the recordings that existed as of the date of publication (1993). He voices the wish that sopranos would again take up the practice of ornamenting this piece as the likes of Selma Kurz and Luisa Tetrazzini once did. That reminds us that there was a time when this part, conceived along the lines of Urbain in Les Huguenots and unlike any other written by Verdi, was intended for a leading coloratura soprano, and that in exchange for her services, she would often be granted allowance for invention of a kind otherwise absent from the opera. I was surprised to hear Callam introduce limited versions of what apparently became standard ornamentation in the song, and to learn that this practice survived in Germany long after it had been eliminated elsewhere. My own view, as always with operas from the time when the ornamental was giving way to the prismatic in vocal inflection, is that the embellishment must serve dramatic purpose within the framework set by the going style of performance. I don’t see how Kurz’s beloved extended trills, wonderful to hear as isolated effects, could do this, and some of Tetrazzini’s flights, generally much more to the point, also reach the regions of display per se, which at this tense juncture just holds up the show. In his well-informed essay for EMI’s three-disc release of Tetrazzini’s London recordings, Michael Aspinall approvingly notes a teasing quality in the cadenza, but is put off by the loud, wide-open adjustment for the bouncy la-la-las that follow “Oscar lo sa, ma nol dirà,” whereas I hear a sassy young man daring to be rude to his stiffbacked rival for Riccardo’s favor, and find that dramatically enhancing. ^(I)