ascolto comparato: “In fernem Land” (Gralserzählung) LOHENGRIN

Again, JONAS KAUFMANN. THE tenor of the moment, Florestan at the Salzburg Festival, hailed as an almost supernatural phenomenon, singing everywhere and everything from Des Grieux (Puccini), Don José, Chénier, Canio and Turiddu to Alvaro, Radames, Lohengrin and Fidelio (Otello due in 2017 – and going easily from Winterreise to Kalmán and Lehár. An attractive man, an eloquent interview partner – willing to play the game of the mass media and marketing world and willing to cooperate with most „modern“ stage directors (or at least pretending to be). The voice? The singing? The Artist? These things have ceased to matter long ago. In opera business there are hardly any people left, who really are able to judge how good a singer really is. We are fortunate enough if we can find somenbody who recognizes a good voice when he hears one. But a good voice and an excellent singer are two different things. And even a good singer only rarely is also a really great artist. Listening to these two German tenors makes one painfully realize how much opera singing has changed in the last 100 years since Heinrich Knote had his singing career.

Like Kaufmann, Knote (1870 -1953) was born in Munich and like Kaufmann, he also started out as a a lyric tenor, making his debut in Munich in 1892 in Lortzing´s „Der Waffenschmied“. Gradually Knote’s voice grew in size and stamina. By 1900, he undertook Manrico as some heavy Wagner roles. After a guest appearances in London in 1901, he returned in 1903, 1907–08, and 1913 and internationally established himself as a major Wagner tenor. He made his debut at the Met on 3 December 1904 in Die Meistersinger. He was extremely successful and immensly popular at the Met in this and other Wagner operas that during his three seasons there. Surprisingly enough, Knote never sang at the Bayreuth Festival. He spent the First World War period in Germany, at the Charlottenburg Opera in 1917. After the war, Munich once again became his artistic home. One more visit to the USA in 1923-24, appearing as Tristan, Walther and Rienzi with a German opera company. He retired from the operatic stage in Munich in 1932 and taught singing. At the age of 82, he died in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
Knote had recorded the Gralserzählung in 1908 already. While the voice was decidedly fresher back then, one realises how the artist had grown and developed in the later recording from 1929, at 60 years of age, 3 years before he finished his career. This is one of the few recordings of the Gralserzählulng which really deserves the term NARRATION. He sings with such cristal clear diction, such vividness and spontaneity and immediacy that he keeps one spellbound despite some short breath and stiff notes here and there. He displays all the knowledge of a good singer with a big career: the experience, the natural authority, the grandeur of stye, the care for both little details and the big line. And one hears no hint of „routine“ or over-deliberate intentions. He also conveys a remarkable balance of rapture and „detachment“, yet sounding firm and manly. The most remarkable aspect of this recording remains, however, Knote´s concise and „crispy“ diction and at the same time his excellent sense for the legato line. Not for a second does his voice never sound pushed or blown up or as if he deliberately opted for „big“ sound. And that´s exactly what Kaufmann does: because his voice is not as broad and spinto by nature as he´d like it to be for the repertoire he wants to sing, he MAKES it sound so. In comparison to Knote, Kaufmann sounds like a hesitant schoolboy when he starts out in a shaky and croony piano. Mannered, overly calculated and artificial, hazy diction, shaky intonation, phoney phrasing, arty vocal effects. In the higher range he has the terribly bad habit of discouloring vowels in order to get the notes out „right“. – Worst of all the last phrase: „sein REEEtter (rather than RIIItter…) ich, bin Lohengrin genannt“. And – yes – we all get it: he starts out piano (sounding whiny), adding more and more voice (sounding strained) and then ends full voiced (sounding effortful) . But there´s a whole world of more nuances, so much more that a singer should be able to draw from his palette than just singing either softly or loudly – IF a singer has full control over his voice. In fact, one could break it down to one single phrase:
„des Ritters drum sollt Zweifel ihr nicht hegen,
erkennt ihr ihn – dann muss er von euch ziehn.“

Kaufmann struggles so much with the notes that he is not able to make anything out of the phrase, merely wanting (or having) to impress with volume and loudness (5:00). Knote, first of all, has full vocal control. He sculptures the words and fills them with a meaning and vocally shapes the phrase. Kaufmann wants to That is what makes all the difference between a singer with a „voice“ and an artist, who really knows how to sing and also „act“ with his voice. Or as Herbert Witherspoon put it:

“The object of art is expression.
The essence of expression is imagination.
The control of imagination is form.
The “medium” for all three is TECHNIQUE.”