Recovering the Forgotten Singer, 7: Kurt Moll

Kurt Moll (1938-2017) was the preeminent German bass in the world’s most prestigious opera houses from the 1970s to the 1990s. A favorite of conductors, among them Herbert von Karajan, Leonard Bernstein, Georg Solti, and Carlos Kleiber, Moll was sought, again and again, for Gurnemanz (Parsifal), Sarastro (Die Zauberflöte), Rocco (Fidelio), the Commendatore (Don Giovanni)—for the stage, of course, as well as for recordings and DVDs of Strauss, Wagner, and Mozart produced in this period. His is a magisterial voice, deep, wide-ranging, and exceptionally sweet.

The clip, “La vendetta (Vengeance)” that follows is excerpted from a 1980 Paris performance of Le Nozze di Figaro. In a mock opera seria manner Moll declaims Don Bartolo’s fulmination against Figaro and articulates with precision its witty opera buffa patter.

 

Baron Ochs in Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier was one of Moll’s signature roles. We see him here in a clip from a 1984 Salzburg Festival performance conducted by von Karajan. The lecherous Ochs cheerfully accepts an invitation to an tryst with the maid “Mariandel,” (his rival, Octavian, in disguise). Helga Müller-Molinari plays the sly Italian messenger. Executing the extreme highs and lows with ease, the bass’s warm timbre invests the character’s most lyrical music with the infectious lilt of the score’s familiar waltz.     

The doleful mood of Franz Schubert’s song “Der Wanderer” calls on Moll’s dark sound to express the despair of the wanderer, homeless, friendless, loveless, and finally hopeless. The singer subjects his immense instrument to the intimate dimensions of the German lied.

 

You will find a profusion of Kurt Moll clips on YouTube. Especially recommended are Sarastro’s arias from Die Zauberflöte and Osmin’s arias from Die Entführung aus dem Serail. You will also find renditions, in German, of Prince Gremin’s aria from Eugene Onegin and King Philip’s aria from Don Carlo.