Wolfram. Let us briefly consider the place of Wolfram von Eschenbach in this drama, as defined in song and action. To start, he is a legendary/historical figure of stature, a Germany’s-Got-Talent champion Minnesinger and, for Wagnerian intertextual reference purposes, the poet of Parzival and thus the progenitor of both Lohengrin and Parsifal. Among Wagner’s characters, only Hans Sachs carries an equivalent real-world cultural weight, and that of the folk-hero sort, whereas Wolfram is of the High Culture of his (earlier) time. Dramaturgically, we cannot call Wolfram an antagonist. Tannhäuser needs none, being his own worst enemy, and Wolfram being so remarkably purehearted, empathetic, and self-abnegating in regard to his rival in both love and song, and to Elisabeth herself, as to merit the epithet “noble,” if not “saintly.” Still, there is rivalry, and the very qualities just described make of Wolfram, from the POV of a freer, more rebelliously inclined artist like Tannhäuser (or Walther von Stolzing) the embodiment of a piety that can only hold itself together by denying the sensual element of love, the kind of goody-goody that might send any man off in quest of the Venusberg. The singer of Wolfram must present these qualities in his physical and vocal presence, or the drama rather falls to pieces at crucial points. Fortunately, Wagner’s setting almost unerringly evokes the appropriate responses from an appropriately cast artist—one with a voice of ample size, a sympathetic timbre of some depth, and a technique that weds stability with legato songfulness.

In accordance with what’s there on the page and with the format of Wagner’s sound world as established by singers, conductors, and orchestras from Wagner’s own time forward, Wolfram was for over a century cast with true Heldenbariton voices, the same ones who would sing Wotan, the Dutchman, and Sachs—at least those capable of lyrical utterance. On what is to my knowledge the earliest extended stretch of Tannhäuser to be recorded,  (Act 2, Odeon, Berlin, 1909), we hear the fine-sounding Hermann Weil, who sang the full range of Wagner parts at the Met, but with special claim on Wolfram and Sachs. Otherwise, between 1900 and 1960 the Met offered, among others, Anton van Rooy, Clarence Whitehill, Friedrich Schorr, Lawrence Tibbett, Herbert Janssen, and George London (that’s where I came in, in live performance terms). Then began a succession of headier, more lyrically inclined baritones with no trace of bass-baritone or true Helden about them (Prey, Weikl, Hagegård, Hampson, Mattei), with only Bryn Terfel to lend a hint of the Wotan/Sachs weight of sound. Abroad and on records, we can add Heinrich Schlusnus, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and Eberhard Wächter to the postwar international-class lineup. All these were accomplished singers—several, indeed, superb—but they represent a notable lightening in our sound-picture of Wolfram von Eschenbach.

You will note that several of the above-named baritones were acclaimed singers of Lieder, as was the Wolfram of this season’s run, Christian Gerhaher. He was scheduled for a Met debut season before last, as the Count in Le Nozze di Figaro, but in that late-pandemic season didn’t make the trip. In the Act 3 confrontation with Tannhäuser, Gerhaher demonstrated that at full tilt he can be heard in a large enclosure (though with rather plain tone), and can connect individual notes into the rudiments of a musical line. Till then, though, he had done neither. Upon discovery of Heinrich’s prone self at the shrine in Act 1 (“Er ist es!“), he hopped up and down like a five-year-old at a birthday party, then proceeded to peck and dab, now audibly and now not, at the flowing melody of his first solo, “Als du im kühnem Sange.” On the minstrels’ podium of Act 2 he administered the same treatment to his eloquent ode to pure (or goody-goody) love, “Blick’ ich umher,” following that up by keeping his urgent, vocally expansive plea “Dir, hohe Liebe, töne” strictly to himself, or perhaps sharing it with the nearest ladies and gentlemen of the ensemble. In Act 3 he first extended this retentive treatment to his opening lines, even at such obvious climaxes as “Dies ist ihr Fragen” or “Ihr Heil’gen,” and then rendered the Evening Star song in an insufferable croon, its concluding lines melting into thin air.