Mozart: Die Zauberflöte - Lorengar, Lewis, Hallin, Evans, Szekely, Harwood, Harper, Sinclair; C. Davis. Glyndebourne, 1960
$16.95
Description:
It is not just the stellar cast of this recording that makes this performance wonderful. Listening to it I felt as if I was in the old Glyndebourne theater on a hot summer's day watching world class performers in one of the most intimate theaters in the world. Pilar Lorengar and Richard Lewis are a well matched pair, both bringing vocal control and heft to roles that are now often cast more than a few shades lighter. Sir Geraint Evans is his normal charming self. The surprise for me was Margareta Hallin as the Queen of the Night. She sings her notorious arias with pin-point accuracy without sounding like a soubrette. Why haven't we heard more of her? The sound is wonderful.
Listen to a Sample:
Great Performance in Uneven Sound!
The cast of this performance of Die Zauberflote is terrific: Lorengar is a lovely Pamina, Lewis a noble, virile Tamino, Evans a funny, down-to-earth Papageno, Hallin a powerful, accurate Queen of the Night, and Szekely a sonorous Sarastro. In addition, the other roles are all well-taken. The performance flows along smoothly under Davis' fleet, dramatic direction. This must've derived from a Swedish broadcast tape because the last track of disc two gives us a Swedish speaking announcer relaying the entire cast. The basic sound is listenable and the tape is pitched correctly, but there are short stretches in both acts afflicted by static, volume levels that go up and down (I kept my remote control handy), and (in the last track of disc one) a flawed master that causes annoying skipping in the dialogue before "O Isis und Osiris". It wasn't the disc I was sent; clearly the problem is in the master copy. The Walhall label also released this in slightly better sound without the skipping at the end of disc one, but that might be pretty scarce right now. All of this is worth enduring for the performance. We've all heard worse sound, but rarely such a beautiful performance.
Peter Gellhorn it may have been...
According to the Glyndebourne archive, the 6th performance of 10 (8 August 1960) was indeed conducted by Peter Gellhorn; the rest by Colin Davis: http://www.glyndebourne.com/about-us/our-archive/performance-archive/performance/2567 IF the present OD performance was on 8 August (and OD is not specific) and the broadcast, then Gellhorn as conductor is correct.
Peter
I think you will find that the conductor of the 1960 Glyndebourne Zauberflöte was actually Peter Gellhorn, at the time chorus master and coach at Glyndebourne, and not Colin (later Sir Colin) Davis. The intended conductor was Sir Thomas Beecham but he cancelled due to ill-health and never conducted any opera afterwards either until his death not long afterwards.I am informed about this because (unless you count an isolated Gilbert and Sullivan in my boyhood) this performance was the very first evening I had at the opera.Hallin was pretty good but at the time the critics called her too sharp-voiced. They were enraptured about the physical beauty of Lorengar, who at the time had not started to put on weight as a result of enthusiastic cooking by her husband.
