Opera
The New Isolde Ir is just twelve -years since a new Isolde has appeared at Cov- ent Garden. At least if other newcomers have sung the part there in the interval, they have left no mark upon the memory. So let us call Frida ',eider the last one, and, if comparisons have to,be made, it will, I hope, be understood that in measur- ing against that great artist Kirsten Flagstad, who achieved so popular a success last week, I am paying her the highest compliment in my power. One does not mention Ingres's Mine, Moitessier When discussing the average Academy portrait. -,- else the nonentity would be obliterated alto-
gether. . .
The Flagstad---let us concede also the old prescriptive right of prime domte to the " the "—is a lovely singer, lovely in voice and in person, and the management of Covent Garden is to be congratulated upon engaging her while her loveliness is still fresh, instead of waiting until a ten-years' reputation elsewhere has taken the bloom off her voice and routine has blunted the, edge of her performance. And what a glorious voice it is !,-,-free, open-throated and with ample reserves of power. Being unable to attend her debut, I listened to the first act of l'ristan by wireless, and heard her in person at the second performance. The first thing that impressed one, sitting at: home with the score, was the extraordinary accuracy of her singing.. If Wagner wrote a crotchet F, a crotchet F she sang and nothing else. It was all dead in tune and in time. Here is yet one more singer—Lotte Lehmann, whose presence this year is sadly missed, is -another—who can show that Wagner's music really does sound better when it is sung than when it is screamed, shouted, barked or even spoken, that in it, no less than in Mozart or Verdi, there is a place for true legato and for sheer beauty of tone. Nor was clearness of enunciation sacrificed to vocal effect. Even Leider, who always sings her words intelligibly, does not achieve such a crystal clarity as Flagstad.
Dead in tune and in time—and, alas ! in feeling not very much alive. Hers is a lovely Isolde, almost a pretty one ; not supremely beautiful; in the full sense of the word, as Leider's was when first we saw it. It is the nearest thing to a girlish Isolde I have seen, and, while that is a very charming thing to see, it Adis far Short • of the woman of Wagner's imagination and -Leiders achievement. There was ' nothing here of the authority. in command, the scornful fury, the passion over- mastering pride, the womanly tenderness (perhaps a little of that), nor of the ecstasy and final piteous dissolution, Mali are 'mime of the ingredients of a great Isolde---only a bland 'Voice floating serenely upon the orchestra. This was a level-headed Isolde who might drive Tristan to distraction with her poise, her lovely indifference ; it was difficult to believe' her capable of sweeping hint away on the full tide of her own passion. One had Only to watch the singer in repose to see wherein she fails. During the scene between Tristan and Markt, she *sat there Unmoved and unmoving. This is, of course, the supreme test of a great artist, since movement in the physical sense is not called for, but the impression must be made that Isolde is living through a bitter experience and coming independently to that mystical decision, which, whether you like it or not, is the don of the whole drama. This Isolde disappeared at that moment as a dramatis persona ; all we saw was a blank woman sitting on a garden-seat with nothing particular to do or to think about.
I cannot make up my mind whether this jewel of a voice was enhanced by its setting or no ; whether it sounded all the more lovely by comparison with the . unsteadiness of the Bring- iine, whose voice wandered all round the note and rarely reached it in the end, and with the toneless and too often tuneless me=a voce of the Tristan, who did not, so far as I can remember, smg one phrase with true .legato ; or whether a better partnership might have fired the Isolde to greater things. The singer had even worse luck in Die Walk tire, when she had to sing opposite an almost voiceless Wotan—no substitute being apparently obtainable. In spite of this handicap, her youthful Briinithilde was en- chanting to the car, but I cannot help feeling that, this was the voice of the Jyrical Elsa and Sieglinde,.and not, despite its power, of the great tragic heroines.
DYNELEY HussEv.
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