Recovering the Forgotten Singer: Margarete Klose (1899-1968)

From the 1930s through the mid-20^th century, Ebe Stignani, the acknowledged queen of dramatic mezzo-sopranos, reigned at La Scala, guested widely in Europe, appeared in North and South America (but never at the Met) and committed authoritative renditions of the classic Verdi roles to disc. (insert) Margarete Klose, would have given Stignani a run for the money if she had sung Amneris, Eboli, and Azucena in Italian rather than German. It was the practice in the major European opera houses to use the vernacular—La Forza del destino was Die Macht des Schicksals in Vienna; Götterdämmerung became Il Crepuscolo degli dei in Milan. Klose appeared in London, Brussels, Buenos Aires, and briefly in San Francisco and Los Angeles, but primarily in the German repertoire. A Bayreuth regular, she was a peerless Ortrud, Brangäne, Fricka; Germany and Austria heard her Verdi and Gluck roles auf Deutsch.

Her voice was exceptionally equalized, at home at the extremes of her range, her timbre rich and instantly recognizable. Klose was notable in the Classical utterances of Orfeo and Alceste and in the Romantic outbursts of Eboli and Azucena. In this clip, from a 1938 recording, the finely sculped phrases of Alceste demonstrate her gorgeous tone and scrupulous musicality. The Queen of Thessaly despairs of her husband’s death and beseeches pity from the nether gods in “Divinités du Styx ("Ihr Götter ew'ger nacht").

 

Klose was justly famous for her Orfeo, in both Italian and German. Here is the aria, “Che faro senza Euridice," sung in Italian on a post-War complete recording of Orfeo ed Euridice. 

 

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Klose conquers the extended range, the declamations and lyric phrases, and the dynamic contrast demanded by “O Don fatale (“Verhängnisvoll war das Geschenk)” from Don Carlo. The German-language text in no way inhibits Eboli’s Italianate passion. 

Klose’s seamless legato and luscious timbre combine for an irresistibly seductive Dalila. She sings “Mon Coeur s’ouvre à ta voix (Sieh, mein Herz erschließet sich).” In this mid-1940s clip, the Berlin Philharmonic is conducted by the legendary but allergic-to-recordings Sergiu Celibidache.

 

 

P.S. Highly recommended, from YouTube, are the arias from Un Ballo in Maschera and Il Trovatore, in German.

 

 

The Beautiful Voice, 2: Cesare Siepi

It took no time for Ezio Pinza to be acknowledged as the Met’s leading bass. He sang important roles in 1926, his debut season, and by 1929, when he was awarded the title role in Don Giovanni, he attained the star status he would enjoy until he left the company in 1947. A successor would need to be a basso cantante with a gorgeous timbre, acting skill, and photogenic good looks. Cesare Siepi fit the bill.

Siepi made his Met debut on Rudolf Bing’s 1950 opening night as general manager. King Philip II, a key role in the new production of Verdi’s Don Carlo, was announced for the charismatic Boris Christoff. But the U.S. government, entrenched in Cold War fear of Communists, denied a visa to the Bulgarian Christoff. The handsome young Siepi (not yet thirty years old) stunned the public and continued to do so for more than twenty seasons. He endowed roles in Verdi, Mozart, Gounod, and eventually even Wagner with impeccable musicianship, compelling dramatic presence, and a voice immediately identifiable for its plush velvet.

Here is the aria, “Ella giammai m’amò,” that won that 1950 opening night audience. Siepi’s limpid diction and silken timbre, equalized from the lowest to the highest register, capture King Philip’s realization that his wife never loved him. Siepi uncannily echoes the mournful cello solo of the long introduction. He repeats, with touching sadness “amor per me no ha” (she has no love for me). The clip is from a recital recording.

Siepi has sung Don Giovanni more often at the Met than any other Met artist. No Zerlina could resist his seductive “Là, ci darem la mano” (Give me your hand). Hilde Güden is the compliant soprano; Josef Krips conducts the Vienna Philharmonic.

Alas, Met audiences never heard Siepi in La Sonnambula. This early recording documents his affinity for Bellini’s bel canto phrases. Count Rodolfo recalls the beauty and serenity of the rural landscape he knew in his youth.

When Pinza left the Met he found tremendous success in the Rogers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific. Siepi tried Broadway twice (Bravo Giovanni in 1962 and Carmelina in 1979). Although he received excellent notices, the shows did not. He commands the appropriate style for the Great American Songbook in his ravishing rendition of Cole Porter’s “Night and Day.”

Recovering the Forgotten Singer, 6: Yevgeny Nesterenko

Russian bass Yevgeny Nesterenko (1938-2021) was one of the phenomenal singers the U.S. discovered in 1975 during the first New York visit of the Bolshoi Opera. His Boris Godunov was a highlight of a several-week visit that introduced a generation of Soviet stars, among them Elena Obraztsova, Yuri Mazurok, and Vladimir Atlantov, many of whom went on to international careers.

Soon after winning a first-place prize in the 1970 Tchaikovsky competition, Nesterenko joined the Bolshoi as its leading bass. The Moscow company remained his home for three decades. At the Vienna State Opera and at La Scala he performed the principal roles of the core repertoire written for his voice type.

Nesterenko’s dark, rich timbre, the ease and strength he commands throughout his range, and the power and subtlety of his acting are fully deployed, as you will see, in the death scene of Modest Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov. The czar’s tender farewell to his son is the inexorable denouement of this tragic history play. Our clip is drawn from a 1978 Bolshoi performance.

Here is the bass’s lyric interpretation of his Act III aria from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. In this commercial recording the mature Prince Gremin voices the depth of his love for his young wife, Tatiana.

Nesterenko was one of the leads in La Scala’s 1978 revival of Verdi’s Don Carlo, conducted by Claudio Abbado. A recording of that production is excerpted here. The singer’s heartrending delivery of “Ella giammai m’amò (She Never Loved Me)” conveys the despair of King Philip as, alone on the stage, he comes to understand that his love for his consort, Elisabeth of Valois, has never been requited.

After his retirement from the opera stage and the concert hall, Nesterenko pursued an active teaching and scholarly schedule until his death from COVID-19.

We encourage readers of this blog who share our enthusiasm for this very great and largely forgotten artist to access YouTube clips of Nesterenko in arias by Mozart, Rossini, Borodin, Puccini, and songs by Mussorgsky, Rachmaninoff, and Shostakovich.

World War II and the Met Roster. Americanization: 2. Regina Resnik

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The Met careers of Regina Resnik and Astrid Varnay, the latter the subject of the previous post, followed remarkably similar trajectories. Resnik made her company debut at the age of twenty-two, younger by less than a year than Varnay when she first appeared on 39^th street. The two dramatic sopranos had large, dark voices, uncommon musical sophistication, and keen interpretive gifts. Forced to replace Europeans absent during the war either by choice or necessity, general manager Edward Johnson called on Resnik and Varnay often, perhaps too often, too soon.

A recent graduate of New York’s Hunter College, at the tender age of twenty Resnik had already essayed Lady Macbeth, one of opera’s most demanding roles, in a Broadway theatre, and soon after, in Mexico, she had taken on Leonore in Fidelio. Unlike Varnay, she came to the Metropolitan through the company’s Auditions of the Air (now the National Council Auditions), a portal through which most successful American singers have passed since 1935.

This is Resnik’s winning rendition of “Ernani, involami” heard by radio listeners in 1944. By any measure, Resnik had an extraordinarily precocious talent, a mature instrument, a grasp of the requisite style, and the requisite technique. Note the subtle shifts in dynamics, freedom in the upper register, strength in the middle, and a real trill, all serving the expression of Elvira’s impatience and rapture.

Like Varnay, Resnik made her acclaimed Met debut as a replacement for an ailing star, in her case the Yugoslav Zinka Milanov. She capped her first season, 1944-45, with performances of Fidelio under the direction of Bruno Walter. During the next few years she was tapped for a world premiere (Bernard Rogers’s The Warrior) and a Met premiere (Britten’s Peter Grimes), along with assignments in the operas of Verdi, Puccini, Mozart, and others.

In the 1950’s, both Resnik and Varnay joined the many other Americans who made careers in Europe as the U.S. fulfilled its destiny as an “exporter of talent.” As Resnik put it in a 1987 interview with Bruce Buffie, “From 1953 to 1960 in Bayreuth was the big time of the American singer. Astrid Varnay was American—Hungarian mother, but half American—and George London and Steber and myself and Jerome Hines. You can go on and on; there was a very big American presence, especially people going in to sing Wagner. In ’53 I made my debut as Sieglinde, and then it was still a very mixed bag of Europeans and Americans, even though in that very season it was George London’s first Amfortas, Steber’s first Elsa and my first Sieglinde. But until 1960, the Americans came up very fast in the Wagnerian circles. They had big voices. Then in 1960 I had switched to mezzo, and was now singing Fricka. Wieland Wagner walked into the rehearsal for his brother’s Ring, Wolfgang’s Ring. He took a look around in the rehearsal and said, ‘Well, well, well. It still looks like the war.’ I said, ‘And what does that mean, Herr Wieland?’ He said, ‘All the Gods are Americans, and the Niebelungs are the Germans.’ Now I’ll tell you why he said that. I was Fricka, Jeromeines was Wotan, Thomas Stewart was      Hines was Wotan, Thomas Stewart was Donner and Gunther, Claire Watson was Freia and Astrid Varnay was Brünnhlde. We were musing over everything that was going on, and it was very apparent, because the way we were seated in rehearsal, not that the Americans sat with the Americans—it just happened that way. He walked in and there were the Americans on one side!” 

Both Resnik and Varnay were underappreciated by Johnson’s successor, Rudolf Bing. An erstwhile Leonore and Aïda, Resnik was miscast as Musetta and Rosalinde; soon after, she made the transition to the mezzo repertoire. Bing unaccountably relegated her to secondary roles, leavened by the rare Amneris. In May 1960, on the Met’s national tour, Resnik sang comic character parts. Later that summer, attendees of the 1960 Salzburg Festival heard her in Don Carlo. As she traverses the shifting landscape of Eboli’s “O don fatale”—the explosive opening section in which the princess curses her beauty for the transgressions to which it has led her, the dolorous middle section in which she vows to retire to a convent for expiation, then her vow to save Carlo in the urgent finale—Resnik proves her right to a place among the world’s leading dramatic mezzos.