This same point concerning the stature of the characters in a drama of this scope, set to so complete a musical response, applies to all the roles, even the small ones. The opera’s first utterance, lancing out into the auditorium over a light accompaniment, is the tenor Narraboth’s: “How lovely is the Princess Salome this evening!” And the next from the contralto Page, low in the range and requiring weight down there, seeking to divert Narraboth’s attention by countering with a theme we’ve already noted: “See the moon’s orb, how strange it appears, like a woman who rises from the grave.” And as this little Moon/Princess contest continues, two soldiers, basses sitting low in their ranges, comment on the dark aspect of Herod’s face and wonder who it is he’s looking at—all this leading to Jochanaan’s first pronouncement from the cistern: “After me, a mightier one shall come.” The best Narraboth I know from recordings is Anton Dermota, already on the ’42 Vienna excerpts, then on later studio and live recordings. But my initial positive impression on rehearing the ’52 broadcast came from Brian Sullivan, already a Met Grimes and soon to be a Lohengrin, who sounds even fresher and more enraptured in ’49. The Page is Herta Glaz, a little off-mike, but a sizable low female voice and a singer familiar with the idiom. (She’s Brangäne on the beautiful Traubel/Ralf Liebesnacht under Rodzinski.) The soldiers? Norman Scott (leading roles at the NYCO and important assignments with Toscanini and the NBC) and Lubomir Vichegonov. In ’49? The young Jerome Hines and Phillip Kinsman. I heard all these singers. Their voices resounded in the house, and in these few scene-setting pages, especially with a dramatically engaged orchestra under a conductor like Reiner, we know, hearing them on these recordings, that we are in a suspenseful world where significant events are going to happen.

To the best of my knowledge, there are no recordings of the 1907 Herodias, Marion Weed. But her Met debut had been as Brünnhilde, and she sang Isoldes and Kundrys, here and abroad, at a time when there was competition for those roles, so her voice must have been a genuine dramatic soprano. The role is designated mezzo-soprano, and in succeeding seasons we had major contraltos and mezzos in the part—Karin Branzell, Kerstin Thorborg (still at it on the ’49 broadcast), and mezzos turning soprano (Margaret Harshaw) or sopranos turning mezzo (Regina Resnik), all voices of amplitude and quality. In ’52 we hear Elisabeth Hoengen, who also sings Klytemnestra in the companion Elektra and is The Nurse on the contemporaneous first recording of Die Frau ohne Schatten. She still had top notes and lots of stage savvy, but as we hear on the broadcast, the lower octave of her voice was a scratchy ruin, and when she sings over the last of Hotter’s orations, tonal chaos reigns. On Vienna ’42 we briefly hear the deep mezzo Melanie Bugarinovich, who after the war is impressive on the series of Russian opera recordings made in Sofia, and of course there must have been others in Europe who sang the part to a high standard (Margarete Klose, for instance, must have done it). Of all those I’ve seen, the most vividly remembered is Patricia Neway at the NYCO, the original Magda Sorel in The Consul, riveting in everything she did even when her big dramatic soprano voice was imperfectly controlled. In that production Phyllis Curtin (strong lyric-coloratura soprano who originated Floyd’s Susannah, good actress, good moves with a shapely, limber body) was the Salome, the resonant and vigorous William Chapman the Jochanaan and, dominating the scene for a minute or two, Norman Treigle as the First Nazarene.