During the 1960s the American singer Jess Thomas
was regarded as the heir apparent to the reigning Wagnerian
heldentenor
Wolfgang Windgassen. He was much in demand for his Parsifal and his
Lohengrin, appearing in recordings of both operas; conducted by Hans
Knappertsbusch and Rudolf Kempe respectively. These still remain among
the best versions available in the current catalogue.
In the early 1970s I saw him on stage at Covent Garden where he gave
a glorious performance of Walther in
Die Meistersinger and an
even greater assumption of Tristan in the staging that marked Solti’s
farewell to the house as Music Director. In the latter he was paired
in two performances with Birgit Nilsson, and for once one had the experience
of hearing a tenor who could really match that heroic voice in volume
and passion. At the same time he was performing and recording Siegfried
for Karajan’s Salzburg staging of the
Ring, and his singing
in that role attracted much criticism for his perceived feebleness in
the strenuous forging scenes, which I always found puzzling because
his singing in
Tristan never betrayed any lack of power.
This curious anomaly is finally explained in the informative booklet
note that comes with this Eloquence release. Apparently, according to
Thomas’s autobiography, he had recorded the forging scene with
Karajan under the impression that he was simply ‘marking’
the part for rehearsal purposes. He therefore refrained from using his
full voice. However Karajan, who was seeking a more ‘chamber music’
approach to the music of the
Ring, used the supposed rehearsal
tape without making provision for any further recording sessions. This
story might seem unlikely, but Josephine Veasey made a similar complaint
when she recorded Fricka in Karajan’s
Die Walküre.
This makes it all the more unfair that Karajan then replaced Thomas
as Siegfried in his recording of
Götterdämmerung, and
later substituted the young René Kollo as Walther in his recording
of
Die Meistersinger,
neither of which roles Thomas ever
had the opportunity to record commercially. This disc contains the only
segments of the latter role that were set down in the studio, deriving
from a 1963 recorded recital which forms the bulk of this reissue.
The disc opens however with segments from the Karajan
Siegfried,
omitting the forging scene where Thomas’s heroic voice was so
shabbily treated. We have two passages giving us the bulk of the so-called
‘Forest murmurs’ and the long solo scene before Siegfried
awakens Brünnhilde on her fire-encircled mountain top. Throughout
these excerpts Thomas’s gentle lyricism is a balm to the ear,
and he is not short of heroic strength either. His long and perfectly
controlled
crescendo on the word “Mutter” during
the Forest murmurs is an object lesson in how this passage should be
sung. Catherine Gayer’s brief contribution as the informative
Woodbird lacks allure; it just sounds pretty.
The 1963 recital presents us with passages from a number of Wagnerian
roles, and it is a pity that with the exception of the
Rienzi
excerpt these are all ‘bleeding chunks’ which just fizzle
out at the end of the relevant section. Nonetheless we get the opportunity
to hear two sections from Thomas’s Walther von Stolzing in
Meistersinger
- not as smoothly sung as would be the case later in his career - and
intriguingly Loge’s narration from
Das Rheingold, a role
often taken by character tenors in stage productions but which demands
real singing in this lyrical passage. Better still are his delivery
of Siegmund’s monologue from
Die Walküre, a superbly
heroic portrayal, and Parsifal’s final address to the Knights
although here the sudden cut-off of the music at the end is cruel. His
delivery of Rienzi’s prayer begins somewhat clumsily, the ornamentation
of the notes not quite clear enough, but soon develops into an impassioned
performance with the little
gruppetti precisely delivered.
We are also given three excerpts from his assumption of the title role
in
Lohengrin. Two of these come from the 1963 recital disc, and
the segment of the Love Duet beginning
Höchstes Vertraun
is somewhat isolated out of context; but the delivery of the Narration,
beginning at a rather slower speed than in the complete Kempe recording,
is rapt and inward in just the right way, rising to a majestic conclusion.
After this the inclusion of the final scene in a live performance from
Bayreuth under Wolfgang Sawallisch feels a little forlorn; Thomas’s
voice shows clear signs of tiredness at the end of a long evening -
and since the complete performance was cut, the Farewell would here
have followed closely on the heels of the Narration. His address to
the swan is a little roughly delivered. The contributions of Anja Silja
as Elsa (in her one phrase) and Astrid Varnay as Ortrud do little for
our enjoyment; the latter in particular makes a poor and stressed showing
by comparison with her live Bayreuth recording nine years earlier which
I
reviewed
enthusiastically in a recent reissue.
Wolfgang Born is not a renowned interpreter of Wagner, but he was for
many years first conductor at Karlsruhe as well as an assistant at Bayreuth.
He clearly knows how the music should go. He obtains excellent playing
from the Berlin Phil - a rather gruff bass trumpet at the beginning
of Siegmund’s monologue aside - and he and Thomas work well as
a team. The recording quality is well-balanced with the orchestral well
in the picture - not always the case in DG recordings from the period
- although in the first
Meistersinger excerpt Thomas seems to
be closer to the microphone than he is elsewhere. He can be heard as
Walther in the complete opera conducted by Joseph Keilberth live from
the Bavarian State Opera, and his Parsifal and Lohengrin are also available.
The recital performances here have a value of their own which makes
their reissue most desirable - especially as the original LP did not
seem to have lasted long in the catalogue. What would be really valuable
would be a complete recording of his
Tristan. Have Covent Garden
got a copy of his performance with Nilsson and Solti in their archives?
It would be even better in video.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
