I thought some group members might be interested in these old recordings which have recently appeared on Youtube:
Firstly, there are two extracts from a performance of “Die Walküre”, given in Birmingham on the 6th April, 1954. This performance was given by the Covent Garden Opera Company on tour — an earlier performance in Croydon received a glowing review
from a young Andrew Porter in Opera Magazine, from which I quote:
“This was a performance of a different class from those we were offered at Covent Garden last season. (...) Reginald Goodall, I was told, had never conducted “Die Walküre” before. Yet overnight with this performance, he placed himself in the
forefront of our Wagnerian conductors. (...) Never have I heard orchestral tone so consistently sumptuous and thrilling.”
The singers were:
Sieglinde — Sylvia Fisher
Siegmund — Hans Beirer
Brünnhilde — Anna Konetzni
Wotan — Ludwig Hofmann
Only two fragments, which the uploader claims were found amongst Goodall’s own collection, have survived. The sound quality is mediocre.
First extract, Act 1: (From the prelude until shortly before Hunding’s entrance)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUWQChI3j6A
Second extract, Act 3: (From shortly before Wotan’s farewell until his invocation of Loge)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQ3CuaRbUmY
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Secondly, a BBC radio concert with the London Symphony Orchestra, broadcast on the 28th March, 1969. The concert began with the Prelude and Liebestod from “Tristan und Isolde” (orchestral arrangement), followed by the Siegfried Idyll, and then the
entire first act of “Die Walküre”.
The singers were:
Sieglinde — Isabel Strauss
Siegmund — John Mitchinson
Hunding — Michael Langdon
The whole concert has survived in very good sound.
Tristan und Isolde: Prelude and Liebestod
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1xpF3PEHjw
Siegfried Idyll
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgoJhNHf-DA
Die Walküre: Act 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQXJlxELOck
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