Richard Wagner - Der Ring des Nibelungen - Varnay, Hotter, Windgassen, Uhde - Knappertsbusch 1956Das Rheingold: Gré Brouwenstijn, Gustav Neidlinger, Georgine von Milinkovic, Ludwig Suthaus, Josef Traxel, Alfons Herwig, Hans Hotter, Maria von Ilosvay, Paula Lenchner, Lore Wissmann, Jean Madeira, Arnold Van Mill, Paul Kuen
Die Walküre: Elisabeth Schärtel, Gerda Lammers, Paula Lenchner, Georgine von Milinkovic, Astrid Varnay, Maria von Ilosvay, Hilde Scheppan, Jean Madeira, Wolfgang Windgassen, Luise Charlotte Kamps, Josef Greindl, Hans Hotter, Gré Brouwenstijn
Siegfried: Wolfgang Windgassen, Paul Kuen, Hans Hotter, Gustav Neidlinger, Jean Madeira, Ilse Hollweg, Astrid Varnay, Arnold Van Mill
Götterdämmerung: Hermann Uhde, Jean Madeira, Maria von Ilosvay, Lore Wissmann, Gré Brouwenstijn, Paula Lenchner, Wolfgang Windgassen, Josef Greindl, Gustav Neidlinger, Astrid Varnay
He has at his command an ensemble of dedicated singers who had built their characterisations to a peak of achievement by 1956. Practically all are German-speaking and all have the art of acting with their voices in an immediate and communicative way, not to forget that they each had voices of a Wagnerian power too seldom found today.
Throughout Rheingold I was astonished and delighted once more by the frightening power and presence of Gustav Neidlinger’s trenchantly sung Alberich and by the detail, feeling and vocal authority of Hans Hotter’s unsurpassed Wotan. Beside them an erstwhile Siegfried, Ludwig Suthaus, offers a Loge who gives every word, even syllable a distinctive colour and meaning, while Jean Madeira’s Erda emits other-worldly authority. And any Rheingold that boasts Josef Traxel, then a leading lyric tenor in Germany, as Froh has a bonus.
Four singers heard in later operas are introduced here. Paul Kuen, another familiar figure, is Mime and provides character without exaggeration. Georgine von Milinkovic introduces us to an imperiously nagging Fricka and comes into her own in the next work. Josef Greindl is a formidable if unsubtle Fasolt, later a granite Hunding and a fearsome Hagen: no wonder, given so much work to do, he sometimes tires a little. Gré Brouwenstijn, a properly worried Freia, then gives us a Sieglinde who develops, in glorious tones, from an introvert to an extrovert when love strikes her. Beside her is Wolfgang Windgassen, standing in at the last moment for an ailing Vinay, and singing a Siegmund who is at once bel canto in line yet intensely eloquent. Incredibly, the next evening he is a tirelessly effective Siegfried.
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