Tristan und Isolde (review)

Victor De Sabata (1892-1967) made a great success with Tristan und Isolde at La Scala when he first conducted it there on 11 September 1930 (in Italian, with a cast headed by Giuseppina Cobelli and Renato Zanelli). The occasion recorded here was his seventh revival of Wagner's score for that theater, and, like the preceding four outings, sung in German. De Sabata's reputation as a serious and disciplined maestro often found him paired with Toscanini. To his further credit go the world premieres of La rondine and L'enfant et les sortilèges.

Turning to this mono recording with high anticipation, I was speedily disillusioned. The balance of orchestra and voices—the former dominant but often blurry, the latter distant—is experienced through a haze of distortion. The jewel-box blurb refers to it as part of a "Desert Island Collection." I can conceive of few greater frustrations than finding oneself marooned with this muzzy Tristan as the only one available.

As far as I can tell from this set, Gertrud Grob-Prandl is overparted; in the more demanding portions of her role her voice sounds thin and hard-pressed. The fifty-year-old Max Lorenz is unsteady when he sustains highish notes and apt to sing ahead of the beat, although he had been performing Tristan with De Sabata since 1939. Elsa Cavelti, the Brangäne (who would later transform herself into an Isolde), sounds harassed, as much as one can hear of her. Sigurd Björling makes a bluff Kurwenal and Sven Nilsson a persuasive Marke, although the latter's music has been rather drastically cut. The Italian contingent in the smaller roles rarely sounds un-German. These observations are made with the caveat that I could hear none of them in his or her complete role. Balances are that bad.

It defeats me to wonder whom to recommend this set to, though someone hell-bent on collecting every note recorded by one of these singers might give it shelf room. I honestly do not know if this performance has ever been issued on another label, but I would be careful to check it out before I invested in it.