These excerpts give us all of Amy Shuard's Brunnhilde from Siegfried and Gotterdammerung. She sings better here than she did in the earlier 1965 Covent Garden Ring under Solti where she ducked several high C's (perhaps she was indisposed.) Her interpretation is very passionate and, at times, almost girlish. Shuard is the raison d'etre for this set. The other singers are all very good and are the same ones in the Ring with Birgit Nilsson from this year. We hear a little of Gwyneth Jones as Gutrune including her blood-curdling scream when she hears of Siegfried's death.Leitner is an excellent conductor, but be aware he makes a number of cuts. The sound is very good though there is bleed-through from another performance in the latter part of the Act Two excerpts. Shuard fans must get this. She fully justifies her reputation!

Opera Depot has performed a great service by making available so many recordings of Amy Shuard in performance, even making converts of skeptics. (Well, one anyway.) Here she is heard in Act III of SIEGFRIED and all of Brünnhilde's music from GOTTERDAMMERUNG. Like Anita Valkki, Shuard proves herself to have been a first-rate dramatic soprano who had the misfortune to be be toiling in the outsized shadow cast by Birgit Nilsson. Here, she is tireless and excitingly precise, to say nothing of being fiery to the max. Cast against a tired-sounding Wolfgang Windgassen, she is doubly dominant. Aside from David Ward's noble Wanderer, the supporting cast gets short shrift, although Heinz Hagenau is the coarsest of Hagens, Fabio Giongo suggests Gunther's honor means something to him and there is an uncommonly positive Gutrune from young Gwyneth Jones. Ferdinand Leitner conducts with zeal, drawing an intensely chiseled performance from a less-than-first-rate orchestra. The stereo sound is first-rate.

complément de collection