[Met Performance] CID:156100



Tristan und Isolde
Metropolitan Opera House, Mon, February 19, 1951




Tristan und Isolde (346)
Richard Wagner | Richard Wagner
Tristan
Günther Treptow

Isolde
Astrid Varnay

Kurwenal
Ferdinand Frantz

Brangäne
Margaret Harshaw

King Marke
Dezsö Ernster

Melot
Emery Darcy

Shepherd
Peter Klein

Steersman
Lawrence Davidson


Conductor
Fritz Reiner







Review 1:

Jerome D. Bohm in the Herald Tribune

“Tristan und Isolde”

 

Astrid Varnay Is Isolde for First Time This Season

 

The reputation of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” at the Metropolitan Opera House Monday night brought with it the first appearance here of Gunther Treptow as Tristan and the first appearances of the season of Astrid Varnay as Isolde; Margaret Harshaw, as Brangäne, and Ferdinand Frantz as Kurvenal. The cast included Deszo Ernster, as King Marke, Emery Darcy, doubling as Melot and the Sailor’s Voice, Lawrence Davidson, as Steersman, and Peter Klein as the Shepherd. Mr. Reiner conducted.

As was the case in reviewing Mr. Vinay’s first assumption of the role of Tristan here, a final opinion on Mr. Treptow’s delineation must be withheld until it is possible to hear him in the third act, for the tenor, most exacting of the three acts. Of the two acts heard, the first and least arduous of the three fared best at his hands from the vocal angle. In the second, like most heroic tenors, he found difficulty in singing softly in the love duet and his tones were throaty in the lower and middle register and nasally pinched at the top, with not infrequently dubious intonation to add to the disaffectingly resultant sounds.

By far the most rewarding portrayal was that of Isolde by Miss Varnay. She has grown immeasurably in the role since she first assayed it here and must now be considered in many ways the most satisfactory delineator of this arduous role now appearing here for she not only sings the music remarkably well but acts the role quite magnificently.

Miss Varnay’s Isolde is visually as well as vocally closer to the Irish princess envisaged by Wagner than that of any other soprano now among us. The wide range of the music of the part causes her no apparent difficulties. The high B’s of the first act Narrative were negotiated with a solid brilliancy which has not been accorded them in a good many years and both high C’s in her incandescent greeting to Tristan in the second act were accounted for with similar security. But these were but details, if important ones, in her cogently dramatic delivery of the entire role’s music. Every word was imbued with the apposite color needed to suggest its meaning. It was unfortunate that she did not have a more sensitive companion in “O sink hernieder” and was compelled to carry its poetic message single-handed. Her enactment of the role tarried on an artistic plane equally as high as her singing of it. The fiery, impassioned and ironically scornful princess of the first act, as well as the meltingly tender, living woman of the second act were vividly portrayed by this greatly gifted young singer.

Miss Harshaw was in fine voice and invested her music with sensuously satisfying sounds, although much of her second act Call from the Tower was rendered inaudible by Mr. Reiner’s indiscrete conducting. Mr. Frantz, too, was in good form as Kurvenal.



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