Metropolitan Opera Archives

The many who attended yesterday afternoon's performance of "Götterdämmerung" - the fourth performance of the matinee Wagner cycle at the Metropolitan - were privileged to hear and see the supreme achievement of the operatic stage of today, Kirsten Flagstad's vocal and dramatic embodiment of the third Brünnhilde. Difficult as it is to place any impersonation above the same soprano's transcendent Isolde, one must acknowledge that the "Götterdämmerung" part affords greater opportunities for an outpouring of the noblest soprano voice America has known since Nordica, and that the role otherwise summons from Mme. Flagstad such a power of dramatic expressiveness as even her Isolde does not quite attain.

Beautiful as is Mme. Flagstad's singing of the "Immolation," it is in the earlier scene of the swearing on the spear and the subsequent trio of vengeance, and the still earlier colloquy with Waltraute, that she completely dwarfs every current accomplishment of the lyric theater of which this writer has any knowledge. There are always dissenters, no matter how general the agreement may be concerning the merits of any really great characterization. But so far as this Brünnhilde is concerned, the die is cast. It has taken firm root as one of the historic personages of America's opera.

Aside from the apparition that Mme. Flagstad is in this role, yesterday's rounding out of the "Ring" had the advantage of the heroically sung Siegfried of Lauritz Melchior. If Friedrich Schorr is not the ideal Gunther, he has not lost his command of the Bayreuth style. Kerstin Thorborg's Waltraute had many superb phrases to place beside those of Mme. Flagstad. But Emanuel List's Hagen had fog in his throat and there was not a great deal to be said for the Alberich of Walter Olitzki or the Gutrune of Irene Jessner. Erich Leinsdorf's orchestra was only acceptably accurate and euphonious in its playing.

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Search by title: Götterdämmerung, Ring Cycle [68] Uncut,

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