[3/4/2011] Special: Remembering Margaret Price, Part 1 (continued)

Soprano B is Eileen Farrell, from the 1958-59 Columbia/Sony Messiah recording with the Philadelphia Orchestra -- and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir! -- conducted by Eugene Ormandy.


AND NOW HERE ARE EILEEN FARRELL AND
MARGARET PRICE SINGING ISOLDE'S LIEBESTOD. . .

. . . at the end of Tristan und Isolde, over the body of the just-dead Tristan, with an assortment of other corpses strewn about the unhappy scene -- leaving Isolde's ever-faithful companion Brangäne and Tristan's uncle (and Isolde's husband) King Marke looking on. (The Farrell performance is from a New York Philharmonic concert of Tristan excerpts with Jess Thomas as Tristan.)

Farrell is seen here -- while recording Wagner excerpts for RCA with the Boston Symphony under Charles Munch -- in the control room with Munch and producer Richard Mohr.

WAGNER: Tristan und Isolde, Act III, Isolde, Liebestod

[ISOLDE, who has taken in nothing around her, fixes her eyes on TRISTAN's body with growing ecstasy.]

How gently and quietly
he smiles,
how fondly
he opens his eyes!
Do you see, friends?
Do you not see?
How he shines
ever brighter,
soaring on high,
stars sparkling around him?
Do you not see?
How his heart
proudly swells
and, brave and full,
pulses in his breast?
How softly and gently
from his lips
sweet breath
flutters –-
see, friends!
Do you not feel and see it?
Do I alone
hear this melody
which, so wondrous
and tender
in its blissful lament,
all‑revealing,
gently pardoning,
sounding from him,
pierces me through,
rises above,
blessedly echoing
and ringing round me?
Resounding yet more clearly,
wafting about me,
are they waves
of refreshing breezes?
Are they clouds
of heavenly fragrance?
As they swell
and roar round me,
shall I breathe them,
shall I listen to them?
Shall I sip them,
plunge beneath them,
to expire in sweet perfume?
In the surging swell,
in the ringing sound,
in the vast wave
of the world's breath –
to drown,
to sink
unconscious –-
supreme bliss!
[ISOLDE, as if transfigured, sinks in BRANGÄNE's arm gently on to TRISTAN's body. Deep emotion and sense of exaltation among those present. MARKE blesses the bodies.]

Eileen Farrell (s), Isolde; New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Live performance, Feb. 26, 1969
Margaret Price (s), Isolde; Staatskapelle Dresden, Carlos Kleiber, cond. DG, recorded 1980-82

AFTERTHOUGHT -- ABOUT ISOLDE: I should have indicated that the Liebestod is far from representative of Isolde's writing, or in that sense indicative of a singer's suitability for the role. It's just such a familiar excerpt that it made an easy point of reference. Maybe down the road we can have a fairer sampling of what these two might-have-been Isoldes did with her music.

I don't mean to suggest that these two singers were carbon copies, just that they had more in common than we might casually think. We associate Price with the Handel end of the vocal spectrum: a voice notable, especially earlier in her career, for fairly fearless, accurate, and decisive displays of vocal agility, but in fact it was always a voice of good size, and she took on a growing number of roles from the standard 19th-century repertory, eventually including even this complete recording of Tristan with Carlos Kleiber, which suggested that there actually might have been an Isolde in that voice. With Farrell there was never any question about that. But she was always sparing in her operatic commitments, in particular to tackling the challenge of the big Wagner roles in their entirety, for which the voice seemed so suitable. In her case what we need to remember is just how wide a repertory she sang -- including even Handel!

For tonight I thought we might just hear how quickly Price's vocal command and career presence developed. You may recall from Wednesday that she made her stage debut in 1962, first with the Welsh National Opera, then at Covent Garden, as an emergency replacement for Teresa Berganza -- the only condition, you'll recall, under which then-music director Georg Solti agreed to give her a contract. We don't have any record of what her Cherubino sounded like, and you wouldn't think this unshowy, basically mezzo trouser role would play to her vocal and personal strengths. Here's what it sounded like a decade or so later, from a Mozart aria recital in which she sang an aria apiece for Cherubino, Susanna, and (her eventual role) the Countess.

MOZART: The Marriage of Figaro, K. 492:

Act II, Canzone, Cherubino, "Voi che sapete"

You ladies
Who know what love is,
See if it is
What I have in my heart.
All that I feel
I will explain;
Since it is new to me,
I don't understand it.
I have a feeling
Full of desire,
Which now is pleasure,
Now is torment.
I freeze, then I feel
My spirit all ablaze,
And the next moment
Turn again to ice.
I seek for a treasure
Outside of myself;
I know not who holds it
Nor what it is.
I sigh and I groan
Without wishing to,
I flutter and tremble
Without knowing why.
I find no peace
By night or day,
But yet to languish thus
Is sheer delight.
You ladies
Who know what love is,
See if it is
What I have in my heart.

Margaret Price (s), Cherubino; English Chamber Orchestra, James Lockhart, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded c1973

Nice, even rather pretty, but not exactly overwhelming vocally. And as late as January 1970 Price was recording yet a different, smaller Figaro role, with Otto Klemperer: the tiny but important (and potentially attention-getting) role of Susanna's nubile young cousin Barbarina, whom we meet briefly in Act III and who finally gets her solo opportunity at the start of Act IV. We meet her in a state of near hysteria as she searches desperately in the darkness of the garden for some clearly important item she's lost.

MOZART: The Marriage of Figaro, K. 492:

Act IV, Cavatina, Barbarina, "L'ho perduta! L'ho perduta!"

Oh dear me, I've lost it ...
Oh, wherever can it be?
I can't find it ... my cousin
And my lord... what will they say?

Margaret Price (s), Barbarina; New Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded January 1970

This sounds a bit more like our singer we know, allowing for the fact that she's successfully making herself sound like the impressionable young lass Barbarina is. The next year, when Klemperer recorded Mozart's Così fan tutte, Price vaulted from the minuscule role of Barbarina into one of the grandest challenges in the soprano literature, Fiordiligi. The result was, I think, one of the great recordings of an operatic role, and we're going to sample that in a bit more breadth. As a sample of the singer Price had now developed into, here's another selection from that 1973-ish Mozart aria recital.

We just heard (and saw!) Valerie Masterson give a fleet, lovely, winning account of Constanze's vocal torture test from The Abduction from the Seraglio, "Martern aller Arten" -- "Tortures of all kinds," which Pasha Selim in a moment of weakness has threated to unleash on her to get her to yield to his advances, and which she informs him won't do him a bit of good. But Price's is clearly more the voice Mozart had in mind in creating the role: meeting its extreme demands with not just accuracy but fullness of sound and fearlessness of attack.

MOZART: The Abduction from the Seraglio, K. 384:

Act II, Aria, Constanze, "Martern aller Arten"

Tortures of every kind
May await me,
I scorn agony and pain.
Nothing will shake me,
Only one thing might make me tremble:
If I were to be unfaithful.
I implore you,
Spare me!
The blessings of heaven
Shall be your reward.
But you are determined.
Willingly, unflinchingly
I choose every pain and grief.
Well then, command, coerce me,
Roar, fulminate, rage,
Death will liberate me in the end.

Margaret Price (s), Constanze; Richard Adeney, flute; Neil Black, oboe; Thea King, clarinet; José-Luis Garcia, violin; English Chamber Orchestra, James Lockhart, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded c1973


TOMORROW NIGHT IN PART 2 OF OUR
REMEMBRANCE OF MARGARET PRICE . . .

I don't have this quite worked out yet, but I think we're going to hear those Così fan tutte excerpts, but we've got a lot of music to get through between tomorrow and Sunday. We may have to put some of it on hold.


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