Richard Wagner - Der Ring des Nibelungen - Varnay, Windgassen - Keilberth, Bayreuth 195514CDs - Testament SBT14 1412, released 2006
Hans Hotter (Wotan)
Gustav Neidlinger (Alberich)
Rudolf Lustig (Loge)
Ludwig Weber (Fasolt)
Josef Greindl (Fafner)
Josef Traxel (Froh)
Astrid Varnay (Brünnhilde)
Wolfgang Windgassen (Siegfried)
Hermann Uhde (Gunther)
If you’ve been lusting after the Joseph Keilberth 1955 Bayreuth Ring but the expense has been a stumbling block, congratulations on delaying. Testament has now issued the complete cycle in a single box at a 14-CDs-for-the-price-of-nine cost. (By the way, the label also has the operas available on vinyl. That’s a pricey way to go: Götterdämmerung alone will set you back around $240. The entire box under consideration here can be had for around $200.) Understand, you’re not getting everything that comes with the individual releases. The single operas have more extensive notes, more of the wonderful production photos by Siegfried Lauterwasser, and librettos—though those will be unnecessary to most who buy this set, as it’s unlikely to be their first Ring, and Testament offers the texts as free downloads anyway. You do get two booklets: one with track listings and timings, plus the casts; the other holding brief but substantive essays by Mike Ashman about the saga of these long-unavailable recordings, Keilberth, Astrid Varnay, Hans Hotter, and a number of other relevant topics. There are short blurbs on all the principal singers.
Three of the four dramas have been expertly covered in Fanfare by Evan Dickerson (Die Walküre and Siegfried in 30:2 and Götterdämmerung in 31: 1). I see no reason to repeat his excellent opera-by-opera accounts, and I agree entirely with Dickerson’s—and virtually everyone else’s—positive assessment. But it looks as though Das Rheingold never was reviewed in Fanfare, at least as I’m writing this now. Well, there are no surprises. The magnificent cast gives us quite a ride, moved along by Keilberth’s thrillingly paced (admittedly briskly paced) leadership from the pit. The Wotan/Alberich opposition is especially potent as it’s set up in this performance. Alberich should be as powerfully sung as his rival to underscore the precarious balance of positive and negative forces in the world, and the real threat the dwarf represents. There’s no buffoonery in Gustav Neidlinger’s representation of the role, just a sense of his humiliation and rage. Hotter is fully in control of his magnificent instrument—no wobble, no strain—and he can imbue his character, vocally, with full measures of pomposity and deluding self-satisfaction.
As Fricka, Georgine von Milinkovič isn’t matronly or shrewish. She has the clear-eyed dignity of a political wife whose husband has been caught in a sex scandal. Rudolf Lustig’s Loge manifests a braininess, craftiness, and general command of the situation from his first entrance; the warm, full quality of his voice is very gratifying. The giants both have impressively big voices and the vocal shadings of Ludwig Weber and Josef Greindl capture the diverging motivations of the two brothers. Paul Kuen sounds suitably put-upon as Mime without descending into shtick. Erda’s proclamations are firmly sung, though this climactic moment in the opera might seem more mysterious had Keilberth adopted just a slightly slower tempo. The Rhinemaidens are very capable, corporately and individually.
