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Número 276 - Zaragoza - Diciembre 2023|
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FORO
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| Max Lorenz |
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Max Lorenz Hola, amigos: Como sabéis, Max Lorenz ha sido unos de los mejores heldentenor de la historia. Recientemente ha aparecido un DVD sobre él. En el terreno anecdódito, se da la circunstancia de que era uno de los tenores wagnerianos favoritos de Hitler, siendo homosexual declarado y practicante (hay quien dice que bisexual) y estaba casado con una señora judía, Lotte, hecho que fue ?disculpado? por Winifred y el mismo Hitler y no le impidió cantar en el Bayreuth de esos tiempos, aunque Lotte llegó a tener prohibido el acceso al festival y fue increpada públicamente por las SS. Lorenz, que tenía buena relación con Winifred, llegó a amenazar con no actuar en Bayreuth en defensa de su mujer, que tenía todas las cartas para ser otra de la víctimas del régimen. Esto la salvó. Alguien dijo la famosa frase: ?Yo decido quién es judío y quién no?, frasecita que también le dijeron a F. Lang, autor de la película ?Los nibelungos?, junto a su esposa Thea, cuando Goebbels (creo que fue) le propuso que se hiciera cargo del la cinematografía del Reich y él aludió a que alguna gota de sabgre judía tenía por vía materna. Tras este encuentro, emigró a París en primera instancia, y luego a EEUU, mientras que Thea se quedó y realizó algún trabajo de propaganda nazi. En el documental intervienen personas que conocieron a Lorenz o que sencillamente admiraron su arte, como René Kollo y Dietrich-Dieskau, entre otros. Os adjunto información, aunque sólo la he encontardo en inglés y en ruso, que por aquellos lares también sienten interés por Wagner. Un saludo: Rex. MAX LORENZ: THE MEISTERSINGER Max Lorenz is, comparable to his Italian colleague Aureliano Pertile, a singer who polarizes both audiences and critics. In Germany, Lorenz is considered to be one of the great dramatic tenors of the 20th century, while his voice and musical skills, style and expression have a rather doubtful reputation abroad. John Steane, author of The Grand Tradition ? Seventy Years of Singing, described Lorenz’ voice as unattractive and ugly. Irving Kolodin (The Story of the Metropolitan Opera) meant that Lorenz’ voice had a hard and unpleasant quality, even though appreciated Lorenz as a serious artist. More or less famous German critics attested Lorenz a "voice of powerful brilliance, capable of clear phrasing, a voice which, even in dramatic moments never offended against the laws of bel-canto" (Helmuth Castagne in the LP edition’s booklet of Bayreuth 1936). Friedrich Herzfeld (Magie der Stimme) enthused: "Everything in him was radiant with power ? his appearance and his brilliant voice which even mastered Walter Stolzing’s dangerous top notes with charming nobility". And Jens Malte Fischer (Große Stimmen) praised his "razor-sharp diction" and compared the power of his voice to a blade that was "victoriously" able to cut even through the thickest orchestration. Fischer considered Lorenz’ recordings of Wagner’s Tristan and Tannhäuser to be the greatest recordings of these operas that were ever made. Germany was, without any doubt, the home some of the greatest Wagner-performances ever. And Lorenz was, as Tietjen pointed out, an important part of them. In 1936 the Berlin State Opera presented Der fliegende Holländer with Max Lorenz, Rudolf Bockelmann and Martha Fuchs, Easter 1937 brought Parsifal with Max Lorenz, Frida Leider, Ivar Andresen and Erna Berger. Excerpts from the Bayreuth-performances from 1936 are preserved on records. They are a unique climax in the history of Wagner-singing. In 1938 Lorenz sang Tristan in Bayreuth with Germain Lubin and de Sabata conducting. Jens Malte Fischer writes: "There still are many enthusiasts who wait for a tape of this performance to appear. It promises unimagined delight and those who actually heard the performance live say that they’ve never heard anything better than this in their whole life." The political isolation of Nazi-Germany had a certain disadvantageous effect on Lorenz’ international career on the other hand. Lorenz sang first of all in Austria (which became a part of Germany in 1938), Italy (part of the Axis), and countries that were relatively indifferent or even benevolent to Germany and her political system: Sweden, the Netherlands, Great Britain. In Vienna Lorenz sang from 1933 to 1945 Riccardo in Verdi’s Ballo (for the first time 1933, totally 12 performances), Parsifal (1933/12), Tannhäuser (1936/44), Siegmund (1936/32), Siegfried (Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, 1937/8), Florestan in Beethoven’s Fidelio (1937/66), Bacchus in Strauss’ Ariadne (1937/13), Tristan (1940/28), Pedro in d’Albert’s Tiefland (1940/8), Otello (1942/64) and Don José (1944/4). In 1937, Lorenz sang Siegfried (Götterdämmerung) in Amsterdam with Prohaska, von Manowarda, Fuchs, Heidersbach and Klose, under the direction of Erich Kleiber. His début at La Scala came in 1938, where sang Siegfried (both of them) and Siegmund (replacing the indisposed Franz Völker) under the direction of Victor de Sabata. His performances must have been very impressive. Shortly after, Lorenz got invested as Commendatore - a title, which made him very proud. I was about to leave Milan when I had a talk with Mataloni, the artistic director of La Scala: "Mr. Lorenz, I would like you to stay here at La Scala for the next couple of years. But I want you for the Italian repertoire. I have observed you during today’s rehearsals. I would like you to sing Boito’s Nerone here in our house!" In fact, I returned to Milan a couple of weeks later and started rehearsing Nerone. But the atmosphere remained alien to me, and I returned to Berlin and Bayreuth. Lorenz returned to La Scala in 1939 and 1942, both times singing Tristan with de Sabata. The fact that Mataloni wanted Lorenz to sing Nerone underlines the similarity of his voice and Pertile’s. It was Pertile who had created the role of Nerone and his recordings of scenes from this opera are often estimated as his best. The Maggio Musicale Fiorentino invited Lorenz in 1941. London experienced Lorenz’ Siegfried on the occasion of the coronation ceremonies in 1937. Some historians absolutely insist that Lorenz was one of Hitler’s personal protégés, the "Third Reich’s star-tenor, generally the leading tenor in the Third Reich, Hitler’s favorite" (Fischer). It is true that Lorenz was the busiest tenor in the Third Reich and that his athletic physical appearance served the propagandized picture of the Nordic superhuman perfectly ? in contrast to Franz Völker, the leading lyrical Heldentenor in Nazi-Germany’s Bayreuth. Some even said that his musical style, a certain tendency to press forward when the orchestra was conducted too slowly, reminded to the German "Blitzkrieg-strategy, which of course suited the roles very well" (Fischer). But Lorenz was in the political point of view and again in contrast to his colleague Völker not as easy going. Lorenz’ wife, Lotte, was Jewish ? a fact that brought Lorenz in conflict with the authorities after the adoption of the Nuremberg race-law in 1935. Legal proceedings against Lorenz and his wife were soon initiated since § 1.1. of the new law specifically prohibited the marriage of Jews and "citizens of German blood". The whole affair went to such lengths that Lotte Lorenz was not anymore allowed to visit performances in Bayreuth and even got attacked by SS-men in public. A court case because of the violation of § 1.1. was dangerous and could for the accused end in prison (§ 5.1.) or a concentration camp. And the cases of Tauber and Schmidt had proved that the National-Socialists were ruthless, even when it came to famous and beloved artists. But Lorenz had mighty friends ? one of them was Winifred Wagner, Richard Wagner’s daughter-in-law, a close friend of Hitler since 1923 and one of the few persons that were allowed to address Hitler informally (Du instead of Sie). And in the irrational world of Nazi-ideology contacts were the most important, not blood or paragraphs. Once, Herman Göring, chief-commander of the German Luftwaffe, saved one of his most important generals (Milch, who was accused for being half-Jewish) from removal just by pointing out a declarative statement: "I decide who is a Jew and who is not!" Lorenz denied filing for divorce ? successfully, probably thanks to the protection of influential friends. He even coerced the SS-men, who had attacked his wife, into apologizing personally for what they had done. Lorenz had threatened never to sing in Germany again unless the offenders apologized to her. The fact that Lorenz was not part of the spectacular representation of Wagner’s Meistersinger in occasion of the year’s biggest party congress Reichsparteitag der Freiheit in Nuremberg was maybe caused by the constant disgruntlement between him and the authorities. The part of Walther was then sung by the b-class-tenor Fritz Wolff, who was surrounded by an excellent cast which included Karl Kronenberg (Sachs), Josef von Manowarda (Pogner), Herbert Janssen (Kothner), Maria Müller (Eva) and Wilhelm Furtwängler. The court case against Lorenz and his wife was not the only attempt to split the marriage. Friedelind Wagner, Winifred and Siegfried Wagner’s daughter, tried to convince Lorenz of getting a divorce and marry her instead. Today it seems impossible to find out what or who was the driving force behind these plans, which certainly had the aim to protect Lorenz from any further difficulties. But Lorenz stayed loyal to his wife. Friedelind, originally a fanatic Nazi, changed her opinion about Hitler suddenly in 1940 and emigrated. When the war was over and Lorenz was about to continue his career in the US, she tried to prevent it by spreading the rumor that Lorenz was a Nazi. But Lorenz’ marriage was not the only cause for conflicts. According to Marcel Prawy (Jan Kiepura’s former chief secretary) Lorenz was supposed to be "a prominent homosexual". In 1936 the authorities therefore tried to ban Lorenz from further appearances in Bayreuth. Again Winifred Wagner held her protective hand over Lorenz. In a one-on-one-interview with Hitler, Winifred Wagner put trough that Lorenz could continue. Lorenz was as his biographer Walter Herrmann points out, far from being a Nazi. From time to time he was hiding fugitives in his house and organized their emigration from Nazi-Germany. Lorenz cannot be accused for the fact that he himself did not leave Germany just like Toscanini had left Italy. He was, like Furtwängler, an artist who was dependent on German language and art, a man who was closely connected to his home and fatherland. To emigrate can also mean to abandon, to stay can be understood as the attempt to make things better inside the lion’s den. The judgements about Lorenz are highly inconsistent. This reminds, as said above, to the case of Aureliano Pertile. The Italian expert Giorgio Gualerzi called Pertile’s voice for "probably the most ugly voice, seen from an objective point of view" (magazine Opera, 1985), while Arturo Toscanini called him his favorite tenor. Lorenz was, in spite of all the critics, the leading tenor for the heavy Wagner repertoire in Bayreuth between 1933 and 1945, he sang at the coronation ceremonies in London in 1937 and was Furtwängler’s choice for the role of Siegfried in Götterdämmerung at La Scala in 1950. The truth lies ? as in Pertile’s case ? therefore most probably somewhere in between the extremes (if it’s possible to talk about truth and objectiveness since everything and especially music lies in the field of perception and subjective taste?). Who was this high controversial singer? Let’s have a look at his biography. EDUCATION In his humorous autobiography from 1963, Lorenz frankly admitted: I am not called Max Lorenz. It is a pseudonym.¹ His real name was Max Sülzenfuß and he was born in Düsseldorf on May 10, 1901. His father was a master butcher with an own shop but without any comprehension of music: He wanted me to become his successor. But that did not interest me. I wanted to become a singer. At any price. The fact that Lorenz actually gave up his surname was a symbolic act of rebellion: in German Sülzenfuß means aspic-preserved pork foot ? what a perfect name for a butcher to-be! But the beginning was not easy. It is told that Lorenz’ voice was so ugly that his music-teacher dismissed him from the music lessons in school. Everybody, who heard about my intentions said: You want to become a singer? That’s ridiculous, you are hoarse! That’s strange: My speaking voice is always hoarse. But the more huskily I speak, the better I sing! The education had to be done on the sly and against the father’s will. He wanted the boy to learn a "decent" profession. A musical education was in his opinion nothing more than a waste of money. The boy was not even allowed to go to the opera. But Max went secretly, and during the years of dearth in the First World War he organized the tickets by swapping them for sausages and gammons he had stolen from the father’s shop! The dark suite had to be hidden in the cellar. When his father caught him on his return from the theater he used, as Lorenz wrote, to give him a good trashing. Only the mother was supportive and financed the boy’s education. Lorenz studied with Professor Pauli in Cologne ? a city that lies about 40 KM away from Düsseldorf: For over five years I secretly went to Cologne three times a week. When I came home in the evening I was not allowed to say a word about how it went. My mother just gave me a glance, which meant: "Was it good?" And I returned the look: "Very good". After five years of studies, Pauli advised Lorenz to continue the education with Professor Ernst Grenzebach in Berlin. Grenzebach had already worked with Melchior and Kipnis. But Berlin was 400 kilometers away and travels of this caliber could certainly not be done secretly anymore. The father was furious, but it was the mother who got her way: I went to Berlin to see Grenzebach. While I was waiting for my turn I listened to Lauritz Melchior, the famous Heldentenor. He was taking lessons with Grenzebach and I heard how he got dressed to size by the Professor. That was enormously impressive. To me the Professor said: "Well, nice voice, but we would need to take away the rust first. You have to start over again." And Grenzebach was a very rigorous taskmaster. Lorenz, gifted with a strong body of impressive size and athletic appearance, used to sing with full power. But Grenzebach said: "When you practice, sing piano! Always piano piano! I know that you are able to sing forte. But the voice grows from the piano. You must be able to sing so low that nobody can hear you even when you have the window open! The little will become a lot. Your voice must be like a rubber band. When you pull, it becomes longer and longer!" The consequent use of Grenzebach’s method turned, as Lorenz told in a radiobroadcast, the originally lyrical voice into a Heldentenor. Lorenz had to meet Grenzebach every day, he was the first student to show up and the last to go home. When it was not his turn, he had to listen to the other students and learn from what he heard. He was not allowed to sing arias. Grenzebach told him just to sing single notes throughout the whole year. Grenzebach soon had full control over his promising pupil. He held for example the view that it was absolutely necessary to go to bed early and from time to time he checked whether Lorenz was at home at ten ’o clock in the evening or not. If he did not meet him at home he used to be in a very bad mood. When I showed up the morning after and if I had the slightest sign of indisposition, he used to say placidly:"Go home, this does not make sense! If you go out and are indisposed the morning after, the education is completely useless. If you want to become a singer you have to make sacrifices. That is a ground condition!" STATIONS OF A CAREER The year 1933 marked Lorenz’ definite farewell from Dresden. He became a member of the State Opera in Berlin and received his first invitation to Bayreuth. In Berlin, Lorenz had to sing Radames, and although he had a certain routine with this role, his nerves were all on edge. At 5 in the afternoon I suddenly got a panic attack, took the telephone and called Leo Blech [the conductor of the evening] to ask him to do the performance without me. He said: "Just come! I guarantee you: You’ll be fine, you will sing well. I’m going to help you." The performance was a great success. When everything was over I went back to my locker room where I found a photography of Leo Blech, signed with the following words: "The old Verdi sends his best regards!" I took the photography with me as lucky charm whenever I had to sing Radames. In Berlin Lorenz made the acquaintance of Heinz Tietjen, stage director and musical director in Bayreuth, who always was on the lookout for young talents. Tietjen did not only invite Lorenz to Bayreuth ? he also prepared the 32-year-old for his début at the Festspielhaus with an enormous personal employment. His rehearsals with Lorenz were lasting for weeks, two, four hours a day. During the summer of 1933 Lorenz débuted in Bayreuth singing Parsifal, Walther and Siegfried (in both Siegfried and Götterdämmerung!). A program, that no tenor of today would accomplish. Lorenz stayed loyal to Bayreuth and Tietjen, who had become Lorenz’ first mentor and good friend: Between 1933 and 1944 he appeared continuously each summer at the Festspielhaus, singing Parsifal (1933 and 1937), Lohengrin (1936), Siegmund (1937), Siegfried (in Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, each year from 1933 to 1942), Walther (1933, 1934, 1943, 1944) and Tristan (1938 and 1939). Lorenz soon became the leading Heldentenor for the heavy Wagner repertoire in Germany and abroad. The fact that the peak of Lorenz’ career coincided with the reign of the National Socialists had assets and drawbacks. On one side one has to admit that Wagner’s music never has been supported and subsidized more as during the leadership of Adolf Hitler. That was, on one hand, conductive to Lorenz’ career as a Wagner-singer. The special promotion of Wagner’s music and the spirit of the time, in which Wagner and the idea of the Nordic superman replaced the occidental religion and became something like a holy issue itself, created the ideal conditions for performing Wagner. The music was performed with a religious seriousness, intense and compact ? with a concentration and density that only a black hole, that is about to collapse, can create. In Bayreuth, enshrined, as a Nazi-temple of culture and equipped with outstanding artists, one could work without sorrow. Or as Tietjen wrote: "Max Lorenz on the top, Prohaska, Maria Müller, Margarethe Klose and the then young Greindl? only with those talented and obsessed artists I could, free from everything earthly, invade the sanctum of art." DAS SÜSSE LIED VERHALLT That Lorenz was not hit by the measures of the so-called denazification in the post-war years can maybe be traced back to the fact that he generally has not been perceived as a Nazi, neither in Germany nor abroad. During the winter 1945/46 Lorenz returned to Vienna singing Otello with Hilde Konetzni as Desdemona and Paul Schöffler as Jago under the direction of Karl Böhm. He even added another complex and extremely difficult part to his repertoire: Hermann in Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame, which he sang for the first time in Vienna in 1946. The BBC invited Lorenz during Christmas 1946 for singing Siegmund in Wagner’s Walküre ? a special act of friendship and reconciliation. In 1947 Lorenz sang Tristan in Paris (together with Flagstad), his first post-war performance in a country which had been occupied by the Nazis. Everywhere in the opera house one could feel an icy front, especially the orchestra and the stagehands openly showed a hostile attitude. The performance went very VOICE AND TECHNIQUE Max Lorenz was unlike other Heldentenors like Melchior or Svanholm not originally a baritone, turned into a tenor. Lorenz was from the beginning without any doubt a tenor with, as he said himself, lyrical qualities, with a voice of warm color and enormous power. Grenzebach, Lorenz’ teacher in Berlin, knew ? as Melchior’s example shows ? how to canalize the overwhelming power into trumpet-like tones of extreme brilliance. His voice did not have the dark elements which, in the case of Melchior and Svanholm, tells about their past as baritones. But he possessed, just like Melchior and due to Grenzebach’s school, a powerful well-balanced middle register and ringing top notes with a lot of ring, ping or squillo, for using the Italian term. Lorenz’ earliest recordings even show a vibrato which is very similar to Melchior’s. Also the generation of the top notes was similar to the one of the great Dane and obviously a characteristic of Grenzebach’s education: the notes are very slender and built in the front with a bright approach. Even the dark vowels (a covered a or o) shine with greatest brightness. The small focus in the build-up of the top notes is another characteristic, which at the same time points out an important difference between Lorenz and Melchior. The small focus in the acuti was a quality, which Melchior carried out to the most extreme forms (early recordings and the famous Lehmann/Walter-Walküre) and which always was a dominant part of his creation of sound. Lorenz used this technique only in the beginning of his career. His singing was already in the beginning 1930s not anymore mainly characterized by the small focus. Also the fast, Melchior-like vibrato changed, especially as to the notes beyond the passaggio, into a lightly slower vibration. The vibration’s amplitude went sometimes slightly over the edge, a phenomenon that Melchior with his fast vibrato could successfully prevent. Or, to say it with other words: the glint had become a wave that sometimes seemed hard to control. The similarity of Lorenz and Pertile begins at this point. The fast vibration helped Melchior to keep control over an all too powerful organ, while Lorenz and Pertile from time to time seemed to have lost the control to the amplitude of a wave to which they had given too much power. And a singer’s performance is, just like in the case of Lorenz and Pertile, often perceived as ugly when the amplitude of the vibrato affects the clarity of tone, notes, phrase, melody and music. But such a judgement is undifferentiated and overhasty. It was in my opinion certainly not the voice that was ugly (as John Steane wrote). Lorenz renditions are characterized by a strong declamatory and expressive style, paired, as Jens Malte Fischer wrote, with a "razor-sharp diction". If we ask, why Lorenz partly went away from Grenzebach’s solid technique we would have to search the answer within the field of Lorenz’ declamatory expression. Lorenz meant himself that expression and the beauty of sound (made possible by a solid technique) often were conflicting (cf. interview): I do not care if some notes sound ugly. And he made perfectly clear that the beauty of sound was not always the most important for him: it is the expression that counts. The declamatory gesture demands expressions that might not go along with the golden rules of the art of belcanto. It’s not only about affective bursts like shouting, screaming and crying, but also about the color of the vowels, which, in certain moments, has to be more open or closed, brighter or darker. It occurs for example that a high G or even an A flat is taken completely opened. The liquid and nasal consonants (like r, n, m) are pronounced with an extreme intensity. It even occurs that the musical line and certain single notes get sacrificed for expressive eruptions. Lorenz’ preference of the expressive elements has to be seen as the main reason for the adulteration of Grenzebach’s solid technique. It also caused moments that can be perceived as unmusical, "over-espressivo" (Kesting) or rhetorical exaggeration ? or simply as ugly, unpleasant or ridiculous. |
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Gracias por la información, Rex. Supongo que te refieres a este DVD: http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=7802160 Un saludo. |
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Os podeis hacer con este DVD en www.amazon.uk sin ningún problema y con bastante rapidez. Creo que cuesta unos 17 ? y en un par de dias lo teneis. Yo ya lo tengo y me ha parecido bastante interesante. Un saludo |
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Pues, sí, ese es el DVD. Saludos. Rex, |