Re: have your rankings of favorite Meistersingers changed?

[from Geof. Riggs; not Eliz. H., my better half]

Hans Christian Hoff wrote:

> I am indeed surorised that you do not find occasion tomention the second
> Karajan version with the Dresdner Staatskapelle even in passim . Theo Adam
> is, admittedly, an indifferent Sachs, but for the rest of the cast there are
> very much to ber said. This includes also the Walther of Rene Kollo, which I
> for one rate as a close contender to Konya on the Calig set. The
> Nightwatchman is Kurt Moll. !

Candidly, one of the great virtues of the first Karajan set, IMO, was
its sense of humor and its crucial grasp of the conversational in this
work.  Precisely those two qualities appear to have paled to an extent
in Karajan's second outing, IMO.  This factor, along with one of the
least satisfying interpreters of Hans Sachs on disc -- IMHO --
effectively relegates this to......well, not entirely an Also-Ran (Kollo
gives his finest performance on disc here, and I have always been a
great admirer of Helen Donath)........the status of a decent and
professional enough reading with its share of peaks but not with the
capacity to maintain full interest throughout.

Many greatly admire this set, true.  And whatever is good here is very
good.  (Gorgeous orchestral colors also count for something, no
question.)  But there is too much here that is, at the same time,
journeyman class -- and when one such instance of that is the leading
character (Sachs, in my estimation), the combination of that with the
(partial) loss of the conversational simply bulks too large to pass
muster for me.  Thus, this has always struck me as a decent set, but not
a leading one.

Cheers,

Geoffrey Riggs
www.operacast.com