Isolde’s Liebestod…just without Isolde.

Understanding (or trying to) orchestras who don’t use singers for Wagner’s Opera



This evening as I drove back into the city from dinner with friends about an hour away, I heard something extraordinary. It was the Liebestod, and I’d never heard an orchestra play it so well before. James Levine led the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in a concert version.

I was very upset however that they did they didn’t have a singer at all. I hate this practice, and so I had to take the place of some dramatic soprano. I must say I do as well as many of the so called Wagnerians currently working. It seemed odd to me that they made this choice, to leave out a soprano.

For all the mud I sling – as I just did – about the current dramatic bunch, I really do believe there are some incredible voices which are suited to the challenges of this work. Christine Brewer, Debroah Voigt, Nina Stemme just to name a few of the wonderful voices…and this was James Levine after all. Waltrud Meier is doing it in Milan this very week. The excuse that there are “simply no voices around for it” is just stupid.

Is it possible that some of these people who go to the symphony are not willing to pay to hear a singer like they would a violinist or pianist? I don’t think so: a few years ago when Debroah Voigt and Ben Heppner came to sing a concert version of Tristan in Cincinnati the place was packed…all four thousand seats (yes our opera house is bigger than Chicago’s) sold out. Jeanine Jansen – the world class violinist – played the Tchaikovsky Concerto the same year, and only about three thousand showed up.

My own home town orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra plays very wonderfully…but they rarely have great singer come during the normal season. Matthias Gorne appeared a few years ago, and they play an annual festival of nothing but operatic and choral music, but as a general rule Cincinnati’s Orchestra – like any other medium sized city – gives us very few concerts with the great singers.

Where are they then? Well, looking at the schedules of any of the fine singers I have mentioned, you will find them performing often in Europe or New York, but they rarely come outside of Manhattan to share their voices with the world. It’s a shame that I have to go so far to see a great singer.

If opera is to survive as an art form, the great singers have to end the monopoly that the Metropolitan, La Scala, Covent Garden, and Staatsoper have established (splitting the rest of their time between Chicago, San Francisco and such places). They have to make sure that people know that Liebestod with an Isolde is better than without.

It bothers me however, that that singers often show up in Cincinnati (because the reputation of our kindly nature, and enthusiasm) to try a role out a new roll, or espically after some sort of trauma. That same Voigt/Heppner Concert was her first outing after the surgery and it was his first appearance after a crisis of vocal health. We loved them! We were honored to have them and the city was proud that they had been a part of our illustrious musical history …it is after all as fine as that of New York, but just not as hot right now.

Birgit Nilsson, Placido Domingo, Leonie Rysanek, Jussi Bjorling, James Levine, Martina Arroyo, Leontyne Price…even Richard Strauss have all been at Cincinnati multiple times and even have been regulars (okay not Strauss, he just came twice). It’s a shame that today we have to work so hard (and pay so much) to have this sort of talent come, unless they want us to stoke their ego after they get their nodules removed.

Someone once said, “there is nothing better than great Shakespeare, and nothing worse than bad either.” The same is true of Wagner, and until the singers decide they are going to do it in places like Cincinnati more often, it just will be done with an orchestra. James Levine has no excuse to have done this without Isolde…but unfortunately most conductors do.