Search - Richard [Classical] Wagner, Karl Böhm, ORTF Symphony Orchestra :: Wagner: Tristan und Isolde

Uh oh! Vickers and Nilsson dead ahead! Forecast?

Rachel Howard | ocklawaha, Florida United States | 12/19/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Some of the finest singing you are ever likely to hear in this opera. Nilsson and Vickers sound like they are in love here... so much so, that I would have been worried about their respective marriages if their mates ever heard it. Birgit Nilsson is famous for her power and laser-solid projection. And well she should be, but what a lot of people miss is the fact that her singing was passionate and totally in service to the character. This is a very feminine Isolde and a very human one. I feel for this character as a character and as a human being. Birgit Nilsson, in this recording, makes me feel that way. Her passions, both furious and tender, are very believable. Nilsson could sing with surpassing tenderness and beauty as well as enormous power. Those familiar with Jon Vickers will need not be told how great his Tristan was.... and is on this recording. The great second act duet is very different here than on my other favorite Tristan performances (Karajan with Vickers and Dernesch and Furtwangler, with Flagstad and Suthaus)... The best way I can describe it is this: they are not in the wild throes of lust nearly as much as they are consummating a deep and abiding love: an eternal love. I get the feeling strongly here that these two are soul mates- meant for each other by the gods themselves. Vickers is a vocal match for Nilsson, in the powerful and tender times both. His was an oak solid voice, a deep coffee-colored heldentenor of enormous power. Yet, he could sing feather soft and tenderly so that he caressed the ears like the hands of a gentle lover. This was a quality he shared with Lauritz Melchior and it makes his Tristan into a believable character. (If you have not heard the beauty of a Melchior pianissimo, do yourself a favor and buy some of his records. Melchior had a trumpet powerful voice, and it could lift you right out of your seat, as the saying goes.) He is, after all is said and done, a warrior and a lover. There is the rock solid energy needed by a knight, to survive in those hard times, yet this also is a man who could win Isolde's heart. By the way, Melchior and Flagstad turn in a fantastic live performance under the capable baton of the great Fritz Reiner. I would heartily recommend it, just in case you've been living on Jupiter and haven't heard of it. The sound, as old as it is (late nineteen thirties, if memory serves), is clear and free of distortion.... Vickers' version of Tristan's Mad Scene is just as maniacal here as on the Karajan set, so there's no need to worry on that count. Which brings us to the matter of sound. No, this recording is not the clearest and cleanest, but it's more than just serviceable. This was recorded on an outdoor stage and it was windy, but the voices are clean and clear. I said in my earlier review that the sound here is decent and I make no apologies for that claim. If you want the cleanest, clearest sound, go for the Barenboim recording. From what I remember, the sound is wonderful and the performance brings back memories of Furtwangler- and this is a high compliment, believe me. I prefer the voices and interpretations here, but I think Tristan has fared well over the years. This performance is legendary, the sound works well... and the price! Get it!"

THE Tristan performance

bob turnley | birmingham,al,usa | 07/10/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Melchior in his prime may have equalled this performance. The recordings of the 1930s don't allow us to hear his voice as it really was. The same goes for Kirsten Flagstad. But if you choose to hear how Tristan should be sung, you will find this performance by Vickers to be matchless. His recording with Karajan was more restrained. Comparing Ben Heppner to Vickers is like comparing Melot to Tristan. Because that's all that Heppner would have been allowed to sing in Vicker's day.Nilsson was the best Isolde of her day. Her's is not the alluring sound that Isolde should have, but no Isolde on record has ever been more comfortable with every note of this role. Walter Berry, Ruth Hesse and Bengt Rundgren make this the best all-around cast in the recorded history of this opera.
For me, Act 3 is where this opera makes its name. Melchior may have surpassed Vickers' command of the notes. But Vickers' command of the character has probably never been matched; and judging by today's so-called heldentenors, never will be. If you've ever felt so jaded, so cool or so emotionally bereft, that nothing could bring a tear to your eye, just listen to what Vickers does when he sees Isolde return to him. There is nothing like it."

Nilsson and Vickers in a thunderstorm

Ninon | 09/15/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"A warning before we start off: HiFi-purists who cannot put up with anything less than immaculate studio polish in an opera production need not read on, nor should they even consider buying this live set. While, technically speaking, the sound quality is not exactly bad (this was originally meant to be the soundtrack of a video production), audience noise often occurs with an intensity hardly acceptable (the beginning of the Vorspiel sounds like the background music of a garden party, though later on things get better), and unfortunately the infamous "mistral" blew with all its might over the Roman amphitheatre of Orange that summer evening in 1973. Also the sound engineers regrettably have some problems capturing Birgit Nilsson's otherwise impeccable high notes - a problem which often occurs with these particularly "huge" voices, but here it seems to me to be the major caveat. Though if you're willing to put up with these flaws you're in for three and a half hours of uniquely intense musical drama.



Maestro Böhm's 1966 Bayreuth production is widely acclaimed as a reference, and quite justly so. Yet, listening to this set, one starts wondering...

First of all there is Birgit Nilsson. This battle-tried singer's feline, predatory impersonation of Isolde never worked better than here in Orange. The metallic, always clear-focused voice with its characteristic upper register is employed with greatest ease and mature technique, enabling Nilsson to concentrate on a performance of maximum expressiveness. Nilsson radiates aggressiveness in the first act, animal magnetism in the second, and she sings the Liebestod as if the whole opera hadn't been more of a strain for her than a couple of lieder. Without denying her great Bayreuth performance, I still think that she didn't reach this daredevil sensuality in 1966. Careless of any reserve she sings and acts the role as a demonstration of unlimited artistic commitment. I don't know of any other singer (certainly none of her generation) who could have embarked on such a tour de force, to say nothing of the sheer ease of her performance. Nilsson once mentioned that she used to sing Turandot, a role notorious for its exhausting vocal demands, only in order to relax after her Brünhildes and Isoldes. Listening to this set one can glimpse the truth in her coquettish statement.

One of the greatest problems with Nilsson has always been in finding adequate male singers to be her musical partners. Given the notorious lack of real heroic tenors after WW2 most singers appear like pubescent dwarves when compared with Nilsson's superhuman instrument. Solti's Tristan by this very deficit nearly seems grotesque; in Böhm's Bayreuth production Wolfgang Windgassen, then the only serious competitor for the title of a German heldentenor, managed to use his unfailingly intelligent and moving art of characterization in order to compensate for his lack of vocal splendour - but still one cannot help thinking that his Tristan with all his inward humanism and probing, tasteful musicianship is engaging in a serious mesalliance with that femme fatale Nilsson and her electrically flickering sex appeal.

Enter Jon Vickers: enter Tristan! Provided with a slightly rough timbre and virtually unlimited vocal resources, the Canadian tenor sweeps away any doubts about this fatally united couple. Still a bit reserved during the first act, he lavishly displays his dramatic talents in the nocturnal duet, and in act III Vickers sets out to leave behind the whole bunch of discographical competitors. There have been quite some singers who were able to portray Tristan's suffering in a way both moving and credible but everything else that belongs to these scenes seems to be Vickers' private domain: the rage, the fever, the ardour of love newly inflamed, all the suicidal madness. This third act by itself is worth buying the set. Vickers' Tristan sounds more masculine, and also more of a soldier than most. His hero is a man of the battlefield, and love really strikes him like an accident, a wound received in battle. His reaction is aggressive, almost violent. The garden scene of the second act is for once not drowned in romantic enthusiasm, nor is there any Leonore-like tenderness as in Furtwängler's famed production. What's smouldering between the two protagonists is erratic and erotic craving. It's sheer ecstasy. There is a certain earthy quality to the love story, a tangible and sometimes disconcerting physical presence, a sense of here-and-now, which otherwise perhaps only the "perfect couple" Helen Traubel & Lauritz Melchior managed to convey in the 30's.

The rest of the cast works quite efficiently, if unspectacularly. Walter Berry, with a rather rough, dark timbre, portrays Tristan's sidekick Kurwenal as the man who does the dirty work. It works quite well within the overall approach of the production, yet once you've heard young Fischer-Dieskau (with Furtwängler) with all his sense of humour, juvenile allure, and his almost tender affection for Tristan, the "truest of friends", maybe you won't easily believe in those gruff Kurwenals any more. Ruth Hesse displays the beauty of her dark, rich voice while Bengt Rundgren's King Marke often seems a bit tame and rather bland.

The Orchestre National de l'ORTF is not the Bayreuth Bigband, nor are the Orange amphitheatre's acoustics those of the Green Hill, but the French musicians follow maestro Böhm blindly showing flexibility and fast reactions. Even if some of the music might not have the nth degree of polish, comparison with the 1966 set shows what has already been said about the singers: Böhm's direction is even more animated, expressive, and prepared to take risks than in the older production.

Altogether this is a rich and gripping version, and as a recording it's the document of an unforgettable evening. For aficionados of Nilsson's and/or Vickers' art this is a must-have, and for everybody else the set makes a splendid choice for a second recording, especially as a complement to more widely known studio productions. Go for it!"