Bibliographic record
Abstract
Wagner: Tristan und Isolde--Act II (Uncut). Kirsten Flagstad (Isolde), Eyvind Laholm (Tristan), Enid Szantho (Brangane), John Gurney (Konig Marke), Daniel Harris (Kurvenal and Melot); Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York conducted by John Barbirolli. Concert Performance, Carnegie Hall, New York, 16 April 1939. West Hill Radio Archives WHRA-6044 (1 CD). Wagner: Tristan und Isolde-Act II (Uncut). Same performers and date. Archipel ARPCD 0485 (1 CD). Under consideration here are two editions of the very same performance. Although a concert version of Act II of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde given in New York City during the Metropolitan Opera's golden age of Wagner performance would seem superfluous, this one is unique. It was the third and last of three performances--the last two were both broadcast by WABC, and these were the first uncut broadcasts of this act given in the United States. Kirsten Flagstad's Isolde is documented in multiple live performance recordings, from the Met and Covent Garden, but all are cut to varying degrees, as was standard practice during this period. In 1952 Flagstad made a justly famous, and absolutely complete, studio recording of Tristan for His Master's Voice with Wilhelm Furtwangler, and although her voice was still in remarkable condition, she had certainly lost some of the freshness that characterized her singing before World War II. That said, Flagstad is not at her absolute best in this 1939 concert. High C was never her favorite note, but other Tristan performances from this period show that she was perfectly capable of singing it. Here, she barely touches the first and substitutes an A-natural for the second near the beginning of Scene 2, though she delivers an impressive B-natural near the end of the duet on endlos ewig. High Cs aside, on this occasion Flagstad simply lacked the vocal security that made her unrivalled in this role during this period, but this is the only opportunity to hear her sing all of Isolde's music in Act II during her prime years. The remainder of the is of the caliber one might expect on an off-night at the Met, when a house cast filled in for the international superstars. Eyvind Laholm was born in Eau Clair, Wisconsin of Swedish parents in 1894. His name was originally Jon Edwin Johnson, but to avoid confusion with Edward Johnson, the Canadian tenor who in 1935 became the Met's general manager, he changed his name. To state that Laholm, or any other Tristan, for that matter, was no Melchior would be silly, but by the standards of the 1930s and 1940s he was also inferior to Walter Widdop, Thorsten Ralf, Set Svanholm and Ludwig Suthaus. His passaggio was never properly developed, and as the strains of the uncut act begin to wear on him, he often sounds on the verge of cracking between D-natural and G-natural. Laholm's Tristan simply does not invite repeated hearings. That he does not sound underbalanced next to Flagstad is thanks to her consummate professionalism--she clearly knew his limitations and avoided overpowering him. One even wonders if having to sing with an inferior partner is all or part of the reason she is a notch or two below her usual vocal standard. Hungarian contralto Enid Szantho sang major Wagner roles at Bayreuth between 1930 and 1937, was on the roster at the Vienna State Opera between 1929 and 1939, and also appeared at Covent Garden and the Met. Her Brangane is perfectly competent without being particularly distinguished, and her vocal production is sometimes tremulous, lacking a clearly-defined center to the pitch. John Gurney, who sang the Steersman twenty-four times at the Met, is monochromatic as Konig Marke. John Barbirolli, in my view, is one of the twentieth century's great conductors, and I have long felt that he has never received due credit for his tenure as principal conductor of the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York. Barbirolli was in an unenviable position when he assumed the post of Music Director of the orchestra, replacing Arturo Toscanini. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.018 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".