The Gewandhaus Orchestra in the Leipzig Opera

 

 

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→  CD-Content
→  The “New Theatre
→  “Opera at home”
→  Gustav Brecher
→  “Infuriated theatre directors” ?
→  “Half-price to radio listeners!”
→  Paul Schmitz
→  Full-sounding documents
→  Destruction in the “Magic Fire Music”

 

 

 CD-Content

CD 1

A recording, never before released in Germany, made by the Carl Lindström AG in the large hall of the New Gewandhaus in Leipzig on April 11, 1929:

Carl Maria von Weber 1786 –1826
Aus „Der Freischütz“
Ouvertüre
Conductor: Gustav Brecher
GB Parlophone E 11039/40 Matrizen: 2-21347/348/349 [Collection Jens-Uwe Völmecke]
& MORE DETAILS

 

A Reichssender Berlin tape recording made in the Leipzig-Gohlis Concordia Hall in 1945 for the Deutschlandsender Berlin Friday evening programme “Music for the twilight hour”:

Carl Maria von Weber
Aus „Der Freischütz“
„Nein, länger trag ich nicht die Qualen“ (Rezitativ des Max)
„Durch die Wälder, durch die Auen“ (Arie des Max)
Conductor: Paul Schmitz
Max: August Seider  Tenor

 

All Reichssender Leipzig tape recordings of the broadcasting of opera in the auditorium of the New Theatre in Leipzig on September 25, 1942:

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart  1756 – 1791
Aus „Don Giovanni“
„So allein in diesem Dunkel“ (Sextett aus dem II. Akt)
Conductor: Paul Schmitz
Donna Anna: Margarete Bäumer  soprano
Donna Elvira: Rita Meinl-Weise  soprano
Zerlina: Lotte Schürhoff  soprano
Don Ottavio: Heinz Daum  tenor
Leporello: Joseph Olberts  bass
Masetto: Gottlieb Zeithammer bass

Aus „Così fan tutte“
„Wie der Felsen“ (Arie der Fiordiligi)
Conductor: Paul Schmitz
Fiordiligi: Rita Meinl-Weise soprano

Richard Wagner  1813 –1883
Aus „Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf der Wartburg“
Ouvertüre
Conductor: Paul Schmitz
→  MORE DETAILS

Aus „Lohengrin“
„In fernem Land, unnahbar euren Schritten“ (Gralserzählung des Lohengrin)
Conductor: Paul Schmitz
Lohengrin: August Seider tenor

 

A tape recording made by the Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft (RRG) in the auditorium of the New Theatre in Leipzig on June 11, 1943:

Giuseppe Verdi  1813 – 1901
Aus „Don Carlos“
„Sie hat mich nie geliebt“ (Introduktion, Szene und Arie des König Philipp)
Conductor: Paul Schmitz
Philipp: Friedrich Dalberg bass
The aria sung by the same singer with the same orchestra was recorded by Odeon on August 19, 1943 and released in 1944.

CD 2

All released Odeon recordings made in the auditorium of the New Theatre in Leipzig on August 17/18 and 20, 1943:

Giuseppe Verdi
Aus „Don Carlos“
„Ihr habt zu mir persönlich“
„Du mein Erretter“ (Duett Philipp/Posa)
Philipp: Friedrich Dalberg bass
Marquis Posa: Theodor Horand baritone
Record: Leipzig on August 18, 1943 – Odeon O-3655 Matrices: xxB 9181-9183 Released: 1944

„Oh Carlos, schnell höre“
„Noch hier im Sterben fühle ich Wonne“ (Posas Tod)
Marquis Posa: Theodor Horand baritone
Record: Leipzig on August 18, 1943 – Odeon O-3656 3655 Matrices: xxB 9184 Released: 1944

Richard Wagner
Aus „Tristan und Isolde“
„Soll ich lauschen?“ – „Laß mich sterben!“
Isolde: Margarete Bäumer  soprano
Tristan: August Seider  tenor
Kurwenal: Willi Schwenkreis bass
Melot: Walter Streckfuß bass
König Marke: Friedrich Dalberg bass
Record: Leipzig on August 20, 1943 – Odeon O-8806-8808 Matrices: xxB9187-9192 Released: Nov./Dez. 1943
The recording made of Brünnhilde’s final chorus from “Götterdämmerung” (with Bäumer and Dalberg) on August 17, 1943 was never released. On the recording sheet, the remark “wait and see” was noted on October 12, 1943.
→  MORE DETAILS

 

All Odeon recordings made in the auditorium of the New Theatre in Leipzig on August 21 and 26, 1943.
Florestan’s aria “Gott, welch Dunkel hier” was the only one of these three recordings to be released – in June 1950.
The scene “Euch werde Lohn in bessern Welten” and the finale “Heil sei dem Tag” were withheld, with “sounds hard – improvement expected” being remarked on the recording sheet.
Our unique CD release is based on Odeon’s test pressings in the German Radio Archive:

Ludwig van Beethoven  1770 –1827
Aus „Fidelio“
„Gott, welch Dunkel hier“ (Arie des Florestan)
Conductor: Paul Schmitz
Florestan: August Seider  tenor
Record: Leipzig on August 21, 1943-  Odeon, O-3683, xxB 9194-9195 Released until Juni 1950

„Euch werde Lohn in bessern Welten“
Conductor: Paul Schmitz
Leonore: Margarete Bäumer  soprano
Florestan: August Seider  tenor
Rocco: Willi Schwenkreis  baritone
Record: Leipzig on August 26, 1943 – Odeon xxB 9200-9201, unpublished!

„Heil sei dem Tag“ (Finale)
Conductor: Paul Schmitz
Leonore: Margarete Bäumer  soprano
Florestan: August Seider  tenor
Rocco: Willi Schwenkreis  bariton
Marcelline: Rosel Schaffrian  soprano
Don Fernando: Theodor Horand  bass
Jacquino: Paul Reinecke  tenor
Record: Leipzig on August 21, 1943 – Odeon xxB 9196-9199, unpublished!
→  MORE DETAILS

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The “New Theatre”

One of the most popular subjects on Leipzig picture postcards before the Second World War was the view across the Augustusplatz to the University with its time-honoured Paulinerkirche, the Art Museum and the New Theatre opposite it. The latter building, a symbol of the trade-fair city’s prosperity, was home to the Leipzig Opera.

 

 

Great singers who were in no way inferior to those at the Semperoper in Dresden, the city where the Electors of Saxony had resided, made the ensemble famous throughout the world.
In the late nineteenth century, the young principal conductor Arthur Nikisch and his rival, second
conductor Gustav Mahler occupied the rostrum in the orchestra pit; Gustav Brecher took over
later, while Paul Schmitz conducted there for decades.

The unique aspect of it all is that the Leipzig Opera has no orchestra of its own. Nevertheless, the singers have top-quality accompaniment, for in accordance with tradition, the musicians of the Gewandhaus Orchestra occupy the orchestra pit – and have done for ages, as we like to say …

 

But let us be exact and consult the bulky files in the Leipzig City Archives, which contain all manner of information, since the history of the city’s opera goes back to the year 1693. It so happens that after Venice and Hamburg, the Leipzig Opera is the third oldest municipal opera in Europe!

There was originally no permanent ensemble. Most performances were given by Italian opera companies that brought along their own orchestras. Otherwise, waits and members of the violinists’ guild in the employ of the Leipzig city council were called into service. Although those universal musicians were trained “on all blown and bowed instruments”, at some stage their musical and other abilities began to fall short of the demands placed by the ever more sophisticated and opulent operas.

The Komödienhaus opened in late Baroque Leipzig in 1766. Almost overnight, a new age dawned for the Leipzig Opera, which began to make a name for itself far beyond the city.
The new opera house provided an ideal opportunity for the Leipzig „Compositeur“ Johann Adam Hiller to mark the artistic renewal by premiering his new singspiel Lisuard und Dariolette on the evening of November 25.
Hiller for the first time used established concert musicians recruited from the young concert society financed by Leipzig businessmen that would soon bear the name “Gewandhaus
Orchestra”. Its first conductor was Johann Adam
Hiller.

Hiller’s decision to entrust “his” Gewandhaus musicians with Leipzig Opera duties was a far-sighted, visionary move that secured the orchestra’s existence for centuries – and still does.

Having completed our examination of the orchestra’s roots, we will return in the next chapter to our actual theme, which is the earliest commercial and radio opera recordings of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in the late 1920s …

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“Opera at home”

A sense of excitement prevailed in Germany in the “Golden Twenties”, and it was reflected by social trends as well as commerce and technical advances. Skirts exposed the knees and necklines plunged. Women simply had to wear their hair bobbed. A half-naked Josephine Baker in a banana skirt had men lying at her feet. The radio tower was built in Berlin. Charles Lindbergh set off to fly over the ocean. Fritz Lang filmed his vision of the future in Metropolis.

Cinema, radio and the phonograph became the most popular mass Opera at home and the project ended in a fiasco.
So it was that prepared reports like “… now for the first time, you will be able to listen to the Gewandhaus Orchestra in your own home” landed in the wastepaper baskets of newspaper editors.
What a missed chance! What a pity for Leipzig and its leading orchestra, especially after their colleagues in the Dresden Staatskapelle had stolen a march on them!
They had long had their gramophone records on display at record shops and had booked successes all over the world with their first recordings of the big arias from Puccini’s Turandot made directly after the opera’s premiere media. Everyone wanted to be a part of the new modern age. “The air seems laden with electricity”, we read in one of the glossy magazines.
The mood seemed to sweep everyone and everything along. The Gewandhaus Orchestra too?

The Gewandhaus management had indeed envisaged being the subject of exultant headlines in the German papers that would create a sensation throughout Germany, but a trivial technical hitch thwarted their courageous leap into modern times.

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Gustav Brecher

But let us start at the beginning. The first gramophone recordings of the Gewandhaus Orchestra were produced by the Berlin firm of Carl Lindström AG using a modern electric microphone on April 11, 1929.
They were made in the large hall of the New Gewandhaus, the traditional Leipzig venue of the Gewandhaus Orchestra.
To our surprise, they were conducted not by the conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra but by Gustav Brecher, the general music director of the Leipzig Opera.
The timing of the recordings was also remarkable, for Wilhelm Furtwängler had just given up his position as Gewandhaus Orchestra conductor and his successor Bruno Walter had not yet taken over. A propitious situation for Brecher …

Gustav Brecher Gustav Brecher was no run-of-the-mill conductor. He set out to be provocative and staged highly controversial opera creations. Sensational storms of applause were often drowned out by furious whistles.

In 1927 Brecher and director Walter Brügmann staged Ernst Krenek’s “Jonny spielt auf ” in Leipzig with Theodor Horand as Daniello. It was radical, grotesque and dominated by 1920s jazz.
Kurt Weill‘s “Der Zar lässt sich photographieren” and Ernst Krenek‘s “Das Leben des Orest” followed.
All hell broke loose when Brecht/Weill’s “Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny” was premiered.
The result was a veritable scandal. The “Leipziger Volkszeitung” wrote in March 1930 about the premiere: “The Leipzig New Theatre has done something admirable. Brecher should be rewarded for his courage by shouts of ‘Off to Mahagonny!’ instead of being reproached. Scandals like the one yesterday are more meritorious and educational than many a smooth success.”

But we are digressing and need to return to our first disc recording. The recordings made in 1929 under Brecher‘s baton were of Richard Strauss‘s symphonic poem Death and Transfiguration and Carl Maria von Weber’s Overture to Der Freischütz.
But problems with the wax masters became evident during the recording sessions. According to the recording sheet, the Strauss recording was “later rejected”. The recording company did have monitoring copy pressed, but it was “only experimentally made”.
The work by Strauss was thus never released.

 

The recording of the Freischütz Overture fared a little better, but there too, the recording sheet shows that it afterwards failed the quality check.
In the end, nothing was released of that first recording session of the Gewandhaus Orchestra.
Whereas the recording matrixes of Death and Transfiguration were presumably destroyed on the spot, the rejected matrixes of the Freischütz Overture found their way over the Atlantic to the United States.
There, and in England, the recordings of the “Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra” were finally put on sale in 1931 – though only for a brief time – on the Parlophone label in Britain and with US Decca in America.
One of those extremely rare discs survived the turbulent times in the possession of an American collector and was at our disposal for this CD set.
It is both a unique attestation to Gustav Brecher’s work in Leipzig and a poignant symbol of reparation and homecoming …

The Gewandhaus musicians seem to have been thoroughly disheartened after this disaster, and the orchestra did not venture to make another commercial recording for thirteen years. For this reason, we are regrettably not able to hear Bruno Walter conducting it. The situation at last changed in 1942. Now for the first time, shellac discs of the Gewandhaus Orchestra were to be found in people’s record cabinets: Brahms’s Fourth Symphony under the baton of Hermann Abendroth, conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.

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“Infuriated theatre directors” ?

So was the Gewandhaus Orchestra to be heard only at the Gewandhaus and from the gallery of St Thomas’s Church and the orchestra pit of the Opera until the 1940s?
No! Radio now came into play; after its formation in 1924, public broadcasting had distinguished itself more and more
and in terms of sound quality was well on the way to competing with the gramophone record.
It had the advantage of being able to present whole operas without the constant interruptions necessitated by changing shellac discs every few minutes. Its shortcoming was that in the absence of a suitable means of recording (the magnetic
tape had not yet been invented), everything had to be broadcast live and was therefore transient – continuing to exist solely on the pages of radio magazines that are now yellowed and crumbly.
There were also bitter disputes. Did radio, which dispensed with the magic of the stage, have any right to broadcast opera performances?
Listener polls from the 1920s present views which still give radio producers cause for reflection today.
It is therefore worthwhile to look back on the seemingly never-ending discussions of the “pros” and “contras” for presenting operas on the air.

 

According to an internal prediction of 1929, “as the largest imaginable visitor organization,” radio would become “a kind of popular opera house on a gigantic scale that exerts artistic and educational influence and opens new forms of experience to the masses”.
It seemed those hopes were indeed being realized, since opera and operetta programmes had the highest popularity ratings on the radio stations in the pioneering stage of broadcasting.
That represented a welcome argument for bureaucratic culture trustees “to question the continued existence of traditional opera houses as expensively subsidized undertakings”, to quote an article headed “Opera is dying – radio lives on” in the socialist periodical Arbeiterfunk of 1931.
Theatre directors were infuriated by such radical ideas and mustered a counterattack: „The reduction to the purely acoustic element (is) anathema to the stage illusion and is therefore without artistic value and a mere makeshift!“

 

The text of an admonitory publication with the eloquent title „The infuriated theatre directors“ allows us to sense how great was the fear and misgiving at the existential threat posed by the burgeoning young medium of radio.
In 1926, the Leipzig Opera still forbade their singers to have anything to do with radio broadcasts. Other opera houses were more enterprising, claiming their right to a part of the fees paid artists by the radio stations and promptly reducing their own payments to the singers. The situation was untenable and the quarrelling parties would have to adapt somehow.
Otherwise, they would alienate the singers, who had long recognized that they could use radio appearances as a marketing instrument for themselves and were thus well-disposed towards the new medium.
The Opera Society intervened in 1927, recognizing that collaboration between the competing parties would not only bring in earnings from radio broadcasts but also provide unique publicity for the opera houses. Apart from that, the new medium had cleverly given prominence to its readiness “to promote the interests of the theatres free of charge”.

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“Half-price to radio listeners!”

Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MIRAG) did indeed now begin featuring a popular radio programme entitled “Sonntägliche Bühnenvorschau“ (Sunday opera preview). It comprised reviews of premieres, glimpses behind the scenes in the form of reports on rehearsal work, interviews with singers, stage and theatre directors and the highly popular playing of selections from operas. In addition, the comprehensive MIRAG programme presenting „operatic history in sound“ live from the studio with piano or string accompaniment, or on recordings, enticed central German music-lovers to huddle around the radio loudspeakers in their homes.
In 1930/31 there followed a multi-part radio series with intriguing titles like „A Dresden opera winter under Carl Maria von Weber“ and „Leipzig as a pioneer of comic opera“.
The journalistic broadcasting work was moreover authoritatively supported by articles on opera in the
radio magazine mirag, compiled by Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk in collaboration with the faculty of musicology at the university.
Nearly all the premieres that took place in Dresden, Weimar and Leipzig could now be heard live on radio! From 1929 the station also included the opera houses of Dessau, Altenburg, Chemnitz, Erfurt and Halle, and in 1931 those of Plauen, Zwickau, Braunschweig, Gotha and Gera were added.

 

But the exception proves the rule: even before its controversial premiere, Weill’s opera Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny had been taboo for all broadcasting corporations in the Weimar Republic.
But MIRAG did at least give the composer Kurt Weill the chance to talk about his piece in a topical interview at the Leipzig studio.
The final breakthrough for opera on the radio was however not achieved through opera programmes alone. The real turning-point came when the broadcasting corporations began subsidizing opera tickets and offered listeners admittance to the opera houses of their respective broadcasting regions at reduced prices.
The corporations cleverly advertised with the slogan:
«Radio listeners pay half-price!»

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Paul Schmitz

One of the younger generation of conductors who had no misgivings about the new medium of radio was a certain Paul Schmitz from Munich. He had become principal conductor at the Munich Staatsoper in 1927. At the beginning of 1933,
the thirty-four-year-old Schmitz was invited to Leipzig to conduct the city’s Radio Symphony Orchestra in one of its first broadcast concerts.
He was disappointed to learn during an orchestra rehearsal that the planned transmission had been dropped at short notice in order to broadcast a propaganda speech by Hitler. To console himself, Schmitz made use of the unexpectedly free evening to attend an opera at the New Theatre in Leipzig. He had no inkling of the opportunity that evening would present …

In order to obtain more details about his life, I made personal contact with his daughter. I was pleasantly surprised at our first meeting in her Berlin flat to find that the person who had been so restrained and cautious on the phone actually turned out to be a dainty, talkative woman with watchful eyes. Spread out on her living room table lay her father’s conducting life in the form of old photographs, written documents and tapes that Schmitz had recorded as a kind of conducting diary. She was letting me see her cherished family treasures.
Most importantly, she had many stories to tell, among them a report on how her father “on that unexpectedly free evening at the New Theatre in Leipzig fell into conversation with Hans Schüler, the artistic director of the Opera, who invited him to conduct ‘Parsifal’ just a month later, on April 16, 1933”.
That day (his thirty-fifth birthday) was decisive for his conducting career. The jubilant audience celebrated the young conductor from Munich. A reviewer resorted to euphoric words to describe
Paul Schmitz “the feeling of being confronted with a born conductor”, so that at the request of the Gewandhaus Orchestra Schüler offered Schmitz the position of general music director in Leipzig. It must not be denied that the position was vacant because the Nazis had ousted Gustav Brecher on March 4, 1933 – one of the human and artistic tragedies of the Third Reich.
The Leipzig Opera further enhanced its already high standards of quality and upheld its reputation, for Schmitz was popular with the Gewandhaus Orchestra. Older musicians fondly recollect the period with him.
Schmitz himself was delighted with his position in Leipzig:
“I have never regretted going to Leipzig! On the contrary, it was clear that my decision had been the right one after only a few weeks of working there. We performed a revival of ‘Tristan’ …
The orchestra completely captivated me during the performance, and that laid the cornerstone for the truly great artistic collaboration and close contact I had with those quite outstanding musicians.“

 

Each evening I spent in command of the orchestra was an adventure for me. I cannot forget how the leader Wollgandt looked up to me, his attention riveted on my baton and my eyes – one glance sufficed, and we had understood each other. Nor can I forget the loving care he took of his instrument. He was always the last to leave the orchestra pit, for packing away his Stradivari was a holy rite that needed time! Wollgandt’s wife was Arthur Nikisch’s daughter. I may perhaps take the liberty of adding a feather to my own cap at this point by mentioning an event that really gladdened my heart. When I conducted the ‘Pathétique’ for the first time at the Gewandhaus, there was of course great applause after the third movement, but that was not the end of it. Frau Wollgandt then came into the green room, embraced me and said:
‘Just the way my father did it!’ With this orchestra, I was after all part of a great tradition that included
personalities like Arthur Nikisch, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Bruno Walter and Gustav Brecher! During my first eighteen years as general music director we put together an infinite number of world and
local premieres and new productions. In nearly every case, the critics emphasized the Gewandhaus
Orchestra’s special contribution. I think back on events like the great Wagner cycle that included all Wagner’s works or the performances of works by Strauss. At my request, for example, Richard Strauss attended our Leipzig premiere of ‘Arabella’, congratulating us afterwards with very flattering words, particularly with regard to the orchestra’s achievement. The esteem in which the orchestra was held is also seen in the fact that Carl Orff, having attending our performance of ‘Carmina Burana’, invited us to premiere his latest work, ‘Catulli Carmina’.
The Swiss composers Heinrich Sutermeister and Othmar Schoeck were likewise pleased (which was remarkable, considering the prevailing political situation) that we did not neglect their works in Leipzig. Leipzig was truly my musical home. I spent the finest and happiest years of my life as a musician there because of that collaboration with the orchestra, and I simply do not know how to thank it adequately.”
Those words of thanks end the tape Erika Schmitz recorded with her father in May 1991 – nine months before his death.

The Wagner cycle mentioned by Schmitz on the tape was also given special praise by Johannes Forner in the Gewandhaus chronicle:
“The 1937/38 season was marked by a gigantic cycle of all Wagner’s operas, with semi-staged productions
of the early oratorio ‘Das Liebesmahl der Apostel‘ and the early operas ‚Die Feen‘ and ‚Das Liebesverbot‘,
performed to mark the Leipzig-born composer‘s 125th anniversary. Never before had an even vaguely similar programme been realized in such concentrated form. That massive project, as well as his Mozart cycle of 1941, made Schmitz a first-class opera conductor.“

Steffen Lieberwirth

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Full-sounding documents

Listening to period recordings with ears prejudiced by modern historical awareness is a widespread phenomenon today. The Meistersinger recordings from the time of the Third Reich are a perfect example. Bayreuth 1943?
That must sound like the Nuremberg Rally! Yet the performance under Hermann Abendroth has much more charm, poetry and humanity than some productions of the last twenty years.

There are countless other examples that convincingly refute persistent prejudices.
That is surely reason enough to make the effort of listening carefully before we allow ourselves to be led into drawing false conclusions by our knowledge of the historical context – as the present writer did when he read the details of the first track on the present collection: Freischütz Overture, conducted by Gustav Brecher in 1929. He felt dubious about how this archetypally Romantic piece might sound in the hands of a progressive theatre man whose world premieres of Krenek’s Johnny Strikes up the Band (1927) and Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1930) caused substantial scandals; under the baton of a
conductor who championed modern music and was therefore very quickly dismissed by the Nazis and forced into exile, where he eventually took his own life.

In actual fact, this Freischütz Overture does not sound at all as “deromanticized” as the Parsifal conducted by Pierre Boulez, being instead traditional in the sense Gustav Mahler meant it in his often quoted remark: “Tradition means passing on the flame, not worshipping the ashes!” And that in no way detracts from the recording, which shows that Brecher, for all his progressiveness, obviously did not aim at breaking with established listening habits.
Apropos listening habits: “It is exciting to hear how musical tastes and tonal concepts change over the decades”, said Gewandhaus director Andreas Schulz in his commentary on the first series of the “Gewandhaus Orchestra Edition”. Could that be demonstrated better than by the Mozart recordings in this 2-CD set? Many listeners who have grown up with the recordings conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Arnold Östman, John Eliot Gardiner and René Jacobs will tend to brush aside the excerpts from Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte recorded in Leipzig in 1942 as “typically German” and “hopelessly Romantic”.

But perhaps there are also some listeners who will hear behind the veil of history a quality that has increasingly been disappearing since then: a fullness of sound, both in the orchestra and in the voices (not to be confused with volume!), as in the present case of the soprano Rita Meinl-Weise (1898-1987) in the roles of Donna Elvira and Fiordiligi. She probably did not have the technique needed to cope with the virtuosic parts in Mozart’s music, and in “Come scoglio” she therefore simply omitted the triplets from the dreaded roller coaster rides (hard to imagine her daring to do that under Karl Böhm in Dresden!).
But her voice, which is remarkably like that of Margarete Teschemacher, has a fullness
that hardly exists among lyric sopranos today.
In order to hear similarly rich middle and lower registers in “Come scoglio”, one must go back to the recordings of Eleanor Steber and Ina Souez. Assigning the role of Donna Anna to the best dramatic soprano was a tradition that has long since been superseded.

 

The recording with Margarete Bäumer (1898-1969) shows why: one cannot expect a BMW to have the turning circle of a Smart.
But what effortless fullness she produces as Isolde and Leonore, above all in the middle register!
The upper notes are sometimes a bit shaky, but the soprano’s luxuriantly lyrical, perfectly modulated voice suits these parts far better than the steely tones of many of her successors.

 

Like her, August Seider (1901-1989), her constant tenor partner in Leipzig, was also a little overshadowed by prominent colleagues. In his case it was Max Lorenz, the leading heroic tenor in Berlin, Vienna and Bayreuth. To be sure, Seider did not have Lorenz’s incisive timbre and exciting expressiveness, but he often sang more precisely and carefully. He also interpreted the heroic roles primarily in terms of the flow of the music, without sacrificing clear diction; on the contrary, precisely because music and text melt together, what he sings is extremely clear, which will be appreciated by all those who have felt the need to follow surtitles when attending performances of Wagner’s and Strauss’s works.

 

Frederick (Friedrich) Dalberg (1908-1988) shows that good diction is the best remedy for boredom in the long monologue of King Marke from Tristan and Isolde, conducted by Paul Schmitz in the radio recording of 1943 presented here. Born in England, Dalberg grew up in South Africa and came to Germany at the age of twenty-two to finalize his singing studies. He was engaged in Leipzig from 1931 to 1944, also making guest appearances in Dresden, Berlin and Bayreuth. He was principal bass at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich from 1947 to 1951, after which he sang in the ensemble of the Covent Garden Opera in London. King Philip II in Verdi’s Don Carlos was one of his most successful Leipzig roles.

 

Theodor Horand (1895-1973), heard here in the roles of Posa in the Don Carlos excerpts and Don Fernando in the final scene of Beethoven’s Fidelio, belonged to the Leipzig Opera ensemble for thirty-five years, exemplifying a German tradition that from the mid-1950s increasingly fell victim to the internationalization of opera in West Germany, but survived a generation longer in East Germany because of its cultural isolation.
This compilation of Leipzig operatic rarities comes full circle with Horand, who sang in Gustav Brecher’s premiere of Johnny Strikes up the Band back in 1927.

Thomas Voigt

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Destruction in the “Magic Fire Music”

The New Theatre was destroyed in the early morning hours of December 4, 1943 by the heaviest bombing raid on Leipzig.
The last performance on the previous evening had been “The Valkyrie”, featuring the “Magic Fire Music”.
Paul Schmitz conducted the Gewandhaus Orchestra.

Painter and opera set designer Max Elten, who experienced the inferno and the destruction of the New Theatre at first hand, recorded the event in a pastel drawing.

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