Max Lorenz: Wagner's Mastersinger

Wholenote Discoveries - May 200
Born in 1901, Max Lorenz’s career is traced from choir boy to super-star in Bayreuth and elsewhere during the 1930s and beyond in this DVD+CD package. Intriguing films of his Siegfried give credence to his reputation as the heldentenor of the era. Film and narration together with comments by his contemporaries describe his social life with the in-crowd in Bayreuth. His wife was Jewish and he stood with her, despite the Nazis. He was shielded by Winifred Wagner who used her influence with Hitler on his behalf. But fame is fleeting. Lorenz sang his last Tristan in Dresden in 1960. Waldemar Kmentt recalls that “After his final performance at The Vienna Opera they just let him go home as if nothing had happened. No one from the management came to give him a proper send-off. I felt deeply ashamed for the Vienna Opera.” There are trailers of scenes from four Wagner music-dramas on the DVD featuring latter day heldentenors in leading roles that, perhaps unintentionally, confirm Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s summing-up, “Today you won’t find anyone who could hold a candle to him. No one. Hot air, that’s all.” The accompanying CD contains a document of Lorenz at his best. Extensive excerpts from Siegfried are conducted by Erich Kleiber, recorded in the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires on October 4, 1938 with Max Lorenz, Erich Witte, Herbert Janssen and Emanuel List. Bruce Surtees

Price: $32.98