Metropolitan Opera Archives

Two of the Metropolitan's new German singers were in the cast which competed with Artur Bodanzky and the orchestra in the season's first performance of any one of the Wagner music-dramas. Thursday evening's "Die Walküre" was the occasion for the debut of Curt Taucher, a Teutonic tenor, who has .come to take over the parts last year entrusted to Johannes Sembach; and also served to bring forward the big bass, Paul Bender, in the part of Hunding, his second rôle at the Metropolitan. Otherwise the cast was a familiar one, with Margaret Matzenauer coping as best a contralto may with the higher phrases of the music given to Brünnhilde; with Maria Jeritza a highly pictorial, but not always vocally lovely, Sieglinde; with Clarence Whitehill again one of the noblest of all Wotans, and with Jeanne Gordon an attractive and generally satisfying Fricka. The Valkyries were Grace Bradley, Kathleen Howard, Raymonde Delaunois, Mary Mellish, Flora Perini, Lucille Taylor, Marion Telva and Muriel Tindal.

Mr. Taucher was an improvement over his predecessor principally in that he was entirely secure in his music and there was no call for anxiety as to whether he could go the distance. He presented a youthful and lithe figure, if not one of any particular distinction. His acting was well routined when not too regardful of the footlights. His voice was that of the typical German tenor, neither very musical nor capable of much variety of color, but of plenty of power at the top and sometimes with a flash of the heroic in these higher tones. He should prove serviceable in the lack of a de Reszke, a Niemann, an Alvary, a Van Dyck or even a Knote. Mr. Bender's Hunding was savage and picturesque in action, if somewhat disappointing vocally, after the promise he gave in "Rosenkavalier." Yet he is said to be very fine as Wotan. The stage was very well handled, allowing for certain deficiencies in mechanical devices.

Search by season: 1922-23

Search by title: Die Walküre,

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