And I don't know if I've been influenced by Wagner and the stereotypes thereof, but I have this idea of Wagner being typically "Scandinavian" music, in a way.
Wagner wrote in german, which is slightly different from the norse languages.
The norse composers (i.e. Sibelius) are nothing like Wagner or the germanic composers that followed,
Sibelius was not a "norse" composer. He was Finnish. The Finns have a different language and are a different people from the Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, etc.
Finnish is a Finno-Ugric language, whereas German, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic are all Germanic languages.
Composers like Peterson-Berger and Grieg, who are norse composers are rather more like Wagner than Sibelius.
Still I do not see much resemblance between Grieg and Wagner, they are like opposites.
Grieg is a light sugary milk chocolate with fruit. Wagner is a thick block of 99% cacao.
Some of Griegs music is clearly similar to Wagner.
The reason why the greatest Wagner singers are Scandinavians is because more Scandinavians than others have voices that makes them good to sing for example Isolde. Scandinavian languages are somewhat similar to German and there have always been a strong German influence in Scandinavia it is a popular language to learn. When Nilsson and Flagstad were young it was probably more likely to learn German than English.
Then there are exceptions not all Scandinavian sopranos are dramatic sopranos.
Interestingly, Sutherland could have become a Wagner soprano if she had not been steered by her husband and coach Richard Bonynge toward the Bel Canto repertoire and other things. Before she came under his influence, she was showing the tendency to tilt toward that Fach. Who knows what an Isolde or Brunnhilde she might have been?
She had the potential , and did record an LP of Wagner exceprts with Bonyge back in the late 70s I believe, which as far as I know has not come out on CD yet.
She also famously recorded the voice of the forest bird in Solti's Siegfried, along with Nilsson,Windgassen and Hotter.
She had the potential , and did record an LP of Wagner exceprts with Bonyge back in the late 70s I believe, which as far as I know has not come out on CD yet.
I'm not sure, if she sang Brünnhilde's Immolation scene on the original LP, but I think everything else from that record is in "The Art of Joan Sutherland" 6CD box, which I ordered from Australia, but it seems to be available in Amazon.com.
Caballé also recorded a Wagner LP. Neither is very enjoyable.
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