From Amazon.com
During the 1940s, Helen Traubel and Lauritz Melchior ruled the Wagnerian roost on American opera stages. Although they're not paired up here (turn to the Toscanini
Walküre Act I scene iii or
Götterdämmerung love duet on BMG for the Traubel-Melchior partnership in full flower), this collection of short arias and extended scenes displays a kind of vocal amplitude, ease of delivery, and directness of utterance rarely encountered today. Traubel may not delve the fiery waters of Isolde's Narrative and Curse with the intensity of a Frieda Leider or Kirsten Flagstad, but her clear diction and bedrock intonation will surely stop aspiring Elsas or Isoldes in their tracks. In the complete first scene from Act 3 of
Tristan und Isolde, the matchless Melchior characterizes the protagonist's descent into delirium via purely vocal means, with no enacting or barking. True, his baritonal timbre boasted more vibrance and roundness in the live 1936 Covent Garden
Tristan on VAI. Still, neither Torsten Ralf nor Kurt Baum, fine as they are here, quite matches their older colleague's unique sound. Artur Rodzinsky and Fritz Busch stand out for their full-throttled, supportive podium work. Sony's dazzling transfers uphold the incomparable standards typical of the Masterworks Heritage series, while William Youngren's informative annotations are free of claptrap.
--Jed Distler
