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Round Two: In Fernem Land ( French) Thill, Franz

1744 Views 70 Replies 15 Participants Last post by  MAS, 
Seattleoperafan
Since every one seems to have already voted on the Samson aria I think we have time for a small contest before Shaughnessy posts on Sunday
Georges Thill sings the famous aria from Wagner's opera Lohengrin: "In Fernem Land" translated in french "Aux bords lointains". Recorded in 1931
Aux bords lointains (Lohengrin) · Paul Franz Lebendige Vergangenheit - Paul Franz
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Woodduck
Wagner doesn't sound bad in French, although key words inevitably get displaced from the positions where the composer carefully set them. Lohengrin's mention of the dove - Taube - is a lovely moment a tenor can make poetry with, but that's entirely lost when colombe is moved out of its musical place.

Neither of these performances exhibits any poetry, for me an essential quality in a knight of the Grail, but both are splendidly vocalized and are quite similar. I thought Franz was a little rushed, possibly in anticipation of running over the permissible record side timing. It's a tough choice, but I think I'll pick Thill in recognition of the stunning ease with which he sings everything. I could change my mind if I listened again, but that'll do for now.
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Woodduck
MAS said:
I never thought I’d miss the German language, but here I do. The French does nothing for me, or for Lohengrin, which is my favorite opera of Wagner (no rats, please). Franz, for some reason seems to go on and on, an impression I don’t get from my man Thill.
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Wagner loses something in French, but not as much as he loses in Italian, a language that scans so differently from German that notes often have to be added to accommodate it. Wagner in Italian may be worse than Verdi in German, or maybe not. I'll do without both unless it's Callas singing Kundry or Isolde (of which we'll never hear more than eight minutes) or Joseph Schwarz singing Rigoletto.
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Woodduck
MAS said:
It’s one of Wagner’s “operas,” rather than “music dramas,” with its great choruses, especially hard on the tenors in the chorus, but just gorgeous. We also had a traditional staging, the first Act really looked like it was in a forest, and the lighting design was spectacular (his name was Thomas Munn, never had better lighting than when he was part of the company).
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I've always thought of Lohengrin as Wagner's "fairy tale" opera: innocent maiden unjustly accused, evil witch who tries to destroy her, young boy turned into a swan, knight in shining armor who longs to experience human love... Most of Wagner's dramas are psychologically complex and even disturbing, but the tale of Lohengrin is great bedtime reading that will give the child in us happy thrills and not keep us awake. A production ought to be beautiful to look at and listen to, but still needs to give full weight to the story's gentle pathos. A lot rests on the tenor portraying the Grail knight, who should be both heroic and poetic - two seemingly opposite qualities rare enough in tenors, and rarer found together in one singer.
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Woodduck
Seattleoperafan said:
Most of the fiction I like are sort of fairy tale/ supernatural quest sort of things. I've read Proust, Joyce and Faulkner but now that I am old give me Harry Potter or some sword and sorcery stuff. Preteen in an old man's body. Most opera plots bore me but I like Wagner's plots.
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I love his plots. One of the appeals of his mythical tales is that they work on different levels. You can enjoy them as fantasy; story books of "Wagner for children" were popular a century ago (a little bit cleaned up, of course - no incest or other risque stuff). But then you can probe the symbolism for psychological archetypes and religious or political implications. Wagner was a great storyteller; he knew how to pare the old myths and legends, often full of entertaining busyness and picturesque characters in their earlier tellings, down to essentials. Reading Chretien de Troyes, Wolfram von Eschenbach and Gottfried von Strassburg makes you realize how brilliantly compressed and structured Wagner's Parsifal and Tristan are, with their plots reduced to a few crucial scenes. With many operas, I have trouble remembering what happens when (or, to be honest, caring). With Wagner there's an inexorable logic to the sequence of events, the few essential characters are unique and memorable, and there's a meaning to it all. People like to say "everything happens for a reason," meaning that life is the working out of some higher plan. I don't believe that of real life, but it's always true of Wagner, down to the last dramatic detail. It's one reason regietheater directors screwing around with his operas are so offensive, and it's why I've always longed for great filmic treatments of them that could reveal, in a way impossible onstage, the full reach of his imagination. I'm convinced that great films of Wagner's operas would blow people's minds and win a lot of new friends for opera.
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ColdGenius said:
Once upon a time a saw a schoolgirl taken to the opera by her grandmother. Perhaps she told her it was a fairytale about a princess and they would eat eclairs in an intermission. They left after first act. 😜
Mariinski production of Lohengrin is beautiful and fairytale-like.
View attachment 184433
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Beautiful lighting, with ideal colors for the opera: blue, white and gold.
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Woodduck
MAS said:
Ive had this “dream” of making films of Der Ring des Nibelungen in full realistic style, with locations and costumes following the Nordic legends - though at times I want to use a pre-Raphaelite style.
Incidentally, have you seen the film Die Nibelungen by Fritz Lang? It’s quite beautifully and imaginatively done. Though the dragon is like a komodo dragon.
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Lang's film is indeed beautiful.
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Woodduck
ewilkros said:
And all the operas have backstories, and you can imagine sequels to all of them!
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I suspect we're living in the sequel to the Ring. Things haven't worked out as well as Brunnhilde may have hoped, but I guess we have to go on trying.
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Woodduck
Franz was an outstanding singer of Wagner's heldentenor roles, though he did it mainly in French. Very much worth hearing. Just thought someone should say that lest Thill hog all the praise.
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Shaughnessy said:
Thill is a considerably better actor than Franz - An argument can be made that in the vocal technique categories, a preference for one over the other could be made, but in "musical phrasing", Thill had a clear edge - Wider palette of tonal colours - darker shades, lighter tints, and a far more extensive gray-scale -

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Thill's grayscale of tonal colors...


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Franz's grayscale of tonal colors...
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Thill has a better recording, and I suspect Franz is being hurried along a bit by a conductor anxious to avoid exceeding the timing limits for 78s. That happened often back then. We should always keep the difficulties of recording in mind when judging singers. When we have radio transcriptions of live performances available we can often observe how differently people worked when singing live. My touchstone for this is Frida Leider's live Liebestod compared to her studio one. Night and day (an apt metaphor for the opera in question, purely accidental on my part :) ).
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Woodduck
Shaughnessy said:
I am now... but it took a solid 10 minutes of searching to find out what it meant as I'm not entirely familiar with some of the more obscure American cultural references.

"O-Shag-Hennessy" from the American comedy program "Key and Peele" sketch "The Substitute Teacher" found at the 2:20 mark -


In Irish, the name is Ó Seachnasaigh - In English, O'Shaughnessy - The forum software doesn't allow the use of the apostrophe "O" in usernames - I didn't even ask about the síneadh fada...
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Why are Irish words and names spelled in a way that no non-native would ever guess their pronunciation? For example, why isn't Sean spelled "Shawn"? I'm sure there are some sounds that can't be represented by our 26-letter alphabet.
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Woodduck
ColdGenius said:
I've made an honorary vote for Franz. It wasn't right when he had zero.
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Monsieur Franz informs me that he is grateful.
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Woodduck
MAS said:
I thought that he’d sung Siegfried, but I can’t find Amy evidence of it.
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Amy isn't the person to ask. She doesn't even like opera.
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Woodduck
MAS said:
You should try Siobhan, though I’m not sure it’s Irish.
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I think it is. I've encountered that name several times, and wouldn't even dare to guess its pronunciation. It might as well be written in the Cyrillic alphabet or in Chinese characters.
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