Not having heard OP #11172 (excerpts from this same performance), I don't know how much is overlapped with the complete Act One heard on this disc. Complete is a relative word here: the first two minutes are missing and there are snippets where the acetate discs don't quite overlap. In addition, Kleiber was not afraid of cuts. A good third of the Mime/Wanderer scene is omitted (the section where Mime answers the Wanderer's questions) and some of Siegfried's forging scene. The sound, except for some scratchiness here and there, is certainly listenable (there is a brief section in the beginning where the sound wobbles a bit).Lorenz must have been a thrilling Siegfried. His rhythm isn't always precise, but vocally he is heard in his prime. Witte is a terrific and well-sung Mime. He never exaggerates (well, hardly ever). He would go on to sing Walther in Meistersinger and Loge in Das Rheingold. Janssen sings with strength, but most of his scene is cut. Kleiber does not dawdle, sometimes hurrying along as if a big spider were after him. His leadership is very exciting though. Too bad the entire performance was not preserved. I wonder who the Brunnhilde was - Anny Konetzni perhaps?

For a 1938 'live' performance from the Teatro Colon, this was really something to hear. The reproduction was as good as the best Met reproductions we can hear from that era, and Kleiber the Elder whipped up things considerably. The usual cuts were observed (Lorenz gets Nothung hammered out in only one stanza of his "Schmiede, mein Hammer" ecstasy), and the three artists we hear, most especially Erich Witte as Mime, are extraordinary throughout. I single out Witte as we would not have expected as much from him as from Lorenz and Janssen, yet his is just about the best-sung Mime I have ever heard, and actually has a tonal brightness that is somewhat missing in Lorenz's Siegfried. Possibly the pick-up microphone's placement for him was better than it was for Lorenz, because sometimes when they're singing together, his voice is easier to hear than is Lorenz's. Quite a good Act One, indeed!

Lorenz au sommet de sa gloire. Je préfère Melchior dans Tristan mais pour ce rôle de primaire assez fruste, Lorenz est idéal. Après tout, c'était bien le désir de Brunnhilde, sinon elle aurait demandé un labyrinthe à la place d'un brasier.

Ignore the the scratchy audio of the first few minutes. Kleiber’s agile athletic conducting ably accompanies the youthful sounding Lorenz, less wayward as to rhythm that he can sometimes me. Jansen is a lighter voiced Wanderer with beautiful sense of line, though it’s a pity about the cuts in his scene. Witt is a truly sung Mime with no whining or exaggeration.