Metropolitan Opera Archives

For a good many minutes after the curtain rose at the Metropolitan on Saturday afternoon, three misguided young ladies on the stage-known officially as the Three Norns-did their obstinate best to render inaudible to us the noise of late corners finding their seats in the dark, having heart-to-heart talks with the attendants, greeting their friends, dropping their seats into position, and so on. When the contest of wills was over, and the Norns had left the stage thoroughly beaten, we settled down to what was in the main an admirable performance particularly on the part of Mr. Bodanzky and the orchestra.

It is true that Mr. Taucher sang with no more agreeable a voice than usual, and made a somewhat bourgeois Siegfried. Germany is full of Siegfrieds at the moment. It is true that few of them can sing beautifully, but most of them can sing as well as Mr. Taucher, and the majority of them have at any rate the physical presence. This being so, I can only wonder why Mr. Taucher should be singing Siegfried in New York-a part for which he is even less fitted by nature than he is for Tristan.

Mme. Nanny Larsen-Todsen made a good first impression as Brünnhilde. She has not quite enough voice to be an ideal representative of the part, and her vibrato was at times trying; but she is an intelligent actress and she makes Brünnhilde at once a dignified and a sympathetic figure. As with many another good Wagnerian singer, her gestures appeared at times over-studied and mechanical. The constant movement of her arms in the first act became rather tiring to watch. It was therefore all the greater surprise when in the second act, in the scene of recognition, she showed us what intensity she could throw into her body and her face while remaining immobile for some minutes. Perhaps an admirer may be allowed to suggest that a Brünnhilde who can do what Mme. Larsen-Todsen did here has no need of three-fourths of the conventional attitude striking in which she had previously indulged. She became more and more impressive as the opera went on, and, though her voice was still not ideal for the part, successfully shouldered, as Brünnhilde should do, the whole mighty drama, of the last scene.

Miss Maria Muller made a sufficiently fragile and pathetic figure of Gutrune, Mme. Branzell sang Waltraute's monologue with great conviction, and Mr. Schorr, besides singly nobly, solved the eternal problem of making the ineffective Gunther effective. Mr. Bohnen's Hagen was a fine piece of work, though he was not in his best voice.

The scenery was old-fashioned, but some of the lighting excellent.

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