Rare Sutherland and Vickers, London 1957

Music to Remember

It is easy to forget that a year-round opera company did not exist at Covent Garden
until after the Second World War. The creation of such an ensemble was an act of
courage and faith, enshrined in the manifesto issued by the leaseholders Boosey and
Hawkes in 1945:

We hope to re-establish Covent Garden as a centre of opera and ballet worthy of the highest musical
traditions. The main purpose will be to ensure for Covent Garden an independent position as an
international opera house with sufficient funds at its disposal to enable it to devote itself to a long-term programme, giving to London throughout the year the best in English opera and ballet, together with
the best from all over the world. If this ambition can be realised it is felt that it will be a great incentive to artists and composers, since it will offer to them an opportunity for experience in the performing and writing of operas on a scale equal to that which has prevailed so long on the Continent but has been lacking so long in our musical life here in London.

So, the task was educative: for the ensemble being fostered; for the composers
encouraged; and for the public being created to appreciate opera. Despite initial
setbacks, the achievements of the decade which followed the Covent Garden
Opera’s first performances in January 1947 were significant: the nurturing and
flowering of a company of native artists, chorus and orchestra employed for the
first time on a full-time basis; important new operas by Bliss, Vaughan Williams,
Britten, Walton and Tippett; and the education of a democratic and critical
audience.

Year-round performances in the theatre were the principal ingredient, but regular
BBC broadcasts were an important adjunct. In those days, only a limited repertory
of full-length operas was available on long-playing records, which were themselves
a recent invention. Today’s myriad choice of CDs, DVDs, cinema relays, televised
performances and the internet did not exist. The BBC, still run according to a
Reithian philosophy, took seriously its national role as a purveyor of culture. Much
of that output was delivered through the Third Programme (the forerunner of
Radio 3) but musical broadcasts were also a regular feature of the Home Service
(now Radio 4). One such was the popular weekly hour-long programme Music to
Remember.

The edition of Music to Remember broadcast on 10 June 1957 had been recorded
before an invited audience at the Royal Opera House on 5 May 1957. It comprised
excerpts from two iconic German operas, both performed in English translation as
was then the custom. The production of The Magic Flute had been in the repertory
for some seasons; that of The Mastersingers of Nuremberg had been introduced earlier
that year. The Earl of Harewood, in his spoken introduction to the programme,
drily translates the titles back into their originals ‘for those who don’t understand
opera in English’. He also places the only-ten-year-old Covent Garden Opera
Company within the context of the theatre which would be celebrating its
centenary the following year. He declares that ‘tradition is an atmosphere, which
suggests that the great deeds of the past set a standard for the future’. While
heeding Mahler’s warning that ‘tradition is slovenliness’, he argues that it is ‘an
ever-changing, self-renewing sort of thing, like language or the human skin’.

Harewood, who is modestly described merely as ‘a member of the staff at the Royal
Opera House’ contrasts the first 80 years of the building when it was ‘mainly
devoted to the lyric theatre’ with the ‘eleven years of continuous activity since the
War’ which ‘have helped to keep the Covent Garden tradition alive in every sense,
not least because work in this theatre has been virtually continuous’. Central to
that continuity was the permanent company of artists. Happy the ensemble that
could number Joan Sutherland and Jon Vickers among its members, though neither
was born native British.

Joan Sutherland had arrived from Australia in 1951 and made her debut on
28 October 1952 in The Magic Flute as First Lady. Her second role was as Clothilde
in the famous Callas Norma later that year. One of her audition pieces had been
Elisabeth’s greeting from Tannhäuser and, as a member of the company, she had
ranged through all three soprano roles in The Tales of Hoffmann to Agathe in
Der Freischütz to Jennifer in the premiere of The Midsummer Marriage. In May 1957,
the same month as this Music to Remember was recorded, she sang her first Gilda
in Rigoletto, but her new roles also included Eva in The Mastersingers, Desdemona in
Otello and Madame Lidoine in The Carmelites. It was not until after her triumphant
breakthrough as Lucia in December 1959 that she chose to specialise in the bel
canto repertory. It is therefore especially interesting to hear her full-voiced but
limpid clarity as Pamina and Eva, two roles from her youth of which there is
otherwise no recorded legacy.

Jon Vickers as First Man in Armour and as Walther von Stolzing represents an even
greater rarity, for he never sang these roles on stage. Vickers was, in his own
words, ‘a tenor discovered by David Webster one rainy Sunday afternoon in
Toronto’. The audition took place on 17 November 1955, when Covent Garden’s
General Administrator visited Toronto on the way back from the ballet company’s
performances in New York. Vickers ‘had decided to quit’ because he was not
making headway, but Webster promised him a contract if he would move to
London the following season. ‘Then it will have to be a good one’ responded
Vickers, who demanded a guarantee that if after eighteen months in England he’d
failed he could return to Canada no worse off. His London audition choices in June
1956 were Canio’s ‘On with the motley’ and Don José’s Flower Song. The panel
were so impressed that they asked for Cavaradossi’s arias as well, but Vickers
demurred: ‘I’m terribly sorry. But I feel I’ve made a fantastic impression and I
don’t want to spoil it.’

Vickers’s debut with the company was in March 1957 as Gustavus in A Masked Ball,
soon followed by José in a revival of Carmen and Aeneas in the new Trojans that
summer. Webster had wanted him to make his debut as Walther in the new
production of The Mastersingers in January, but Vickers had argued that there was
not enough time for him to learn the role thoroughly. He agreed to study it with
the Head Coach Norman Feasey, who judged that Vickers had little idea how to use
his voice and was incapable of learning the role. So Vickers defiantly sat at a piano
for eight hours a day for a week and taught himself the notes, before asking
Reginald Goodall, who was a member of the music staff, if he could go through it
with him. When Goodall asked ‘Why aren’t you singing the premiere’, Vickers
explained that he did not want to make his Covent Garden debut in the role.

Goodall replied ‘But you’ve got to do it. I’m going to see Webster.’ He failed to
convince him but reported back: ‘Webster told me he’d heard you weren’t capable
of learning it. I put him right – I told him you knew the whole thing’. Over next
years, Vickers became a much admired Parsifal and Siegmund, but he never
returned to Walther. These excerpts from the latter part of Act 3 Scene 1 show
what we missed.

Likewise, the chorale of the Men in Armour from the trials by fire and water
in The Magic Flute is a one-off, showing how magnificent it can sound when sung,
as it should be, by leading members of a strong company ensemble.

Early in the next decade, both Sutherland and Vickers left the company to become
international superstars, but they did not forget their origins and returned to
Covent Garden regularly as guests. John Lanigan, who is heard here as Tamino and
as David, remained a company member throughout his career of more than twenty
years, graduating from young lyrical to character tenor. Noreen Berry, Magdalene
here, sang a wide variety of roles at Covent Garden during the 1950s and early 60s
and last sang there in 1977. Michael Langdon, here Second Man in Armour, started
as a member of the chorus in 1948, made his solo debut in 1950 and remained a
company stalwart until his retirement in 1977 to become founder director of the
National Opera Studio.

The American James Pease was a member of Hamburg State Opera from 1953-58,
but guested at Covent Garden as Wotan, King Mark, Harapha in Samson,
Baron Ochs, Balstrode and Hans Sachs, for which his supple bass-baritone was
especially suited.

Rafael Kubelík was Covent Garden Opera’s Musical Director from 1955 to 1958,
when his achievements included the first London productions of Jenufa and The
Trojans. His strong commitment to the resident ensemble and to opera in English
was opposed in some quarters and he met with a mixed critical response to his
performances of the German repertory. Yet their virtues of musical clarity evident
here argue that they were under-appreciated at the time. Not, however by
Harewood, who wrote in 1971:

Kubelík made a great contribution to music in London. With his ability to give unstintingly to
colleagues, company, audience and above all to music, he was a pleasure to work for and with.
In thinking of his own career, he might easily not agree with me, but I know that, if I were asked,
I should find it hard not to nominate his three years at Covent Garden as the best of my life.

Michael Whewell wrote to Harewood on 10 May 1957 on behalf of the BBC:

I have just finished checking through the tape of last Sunday – and though I couldn’t do a thing
about your Englishman in the tropics I thought the programme as a whole came off very well.
Not perhaps my first choice for Bank Holiday crowds, but entertainment worthy of the Opera House
and an adornment to “Music to Remember”… I would be happy if you would convey to Rafael Kubelík
and the tireless warriors of your staff…my sincere thanks for all their hard work at a task which isn’t
really in the ordinary line of their duty – and my admiration to your singers and players.
(Letter reproduced courtesy of ROH Collections).

Nicholas Payne, 2013

Track 1:

Music to Remember Part 1

Introduction by Lord Harewood

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791)

The Magic Flute

Overture
Commentary – The Magic Flute Act 2 finale
He who travels
My Tamino!
Commentary

Track 2:

Music to Remember Part 2

Richard Wagner (1813 – 1883)

The Mastersingers of Nuremberg

Act 3, Scene 1

Prelude
Fools! Fools! Everywhere fools (Sachs’s monologue)
Commentary
Good day, my Eva (Sachs/Eva/Walther)
Commentary
Radiant as the dawning that enchants my sight(Quintet)
Closing commentary

Recorded before an invited audience at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden,
5 May 1957. First broadcast on the BBC Home Service, 10 June 1957.

The recording is from the Harewood Collection at Music Preserved.

Remastering by Paul Baily.

• Music to Remember 1
  The Magic Flute K620 Mozart
• John Lanigan
  Tamino
• Joan Sutherland
  Pamina
• Jon Vickers
  First Man in Armour
• Michael Langdon
  Second Man in Armour
• 
  
• Music to Remember 2
  The Mastersingers of Nuremberg
• James Pease
  Hans Sachs
• Jon Vickers
  Walther von Stolzing
• Joan Sutherland
  Eva Pogner
• Noreen Berry
  Magdalene
• John Lanigan
  David
• The Covent Garden Orchestra
  
• Rafael Kubelik
  Conductor