SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

2nd Seattle International Wagner Competition: Members of the Seattle Symphony, competing singers, cond. Asher Fisch, Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, Seattle, 18. 8.2008 (BJ)

There were some good voices to be heard at this second edition of the International Wagner Competition, inaugurated by the Seattle Opera in 2006. With the exception of one contestant, however, whether they were really Wagner voices is open to question.

Whereas two years ago judges, orchestra, and audience all voted for the singer that had my own preference, this time around I found the judges’ and the audience’s choice hard to understand and impossible to agree with. The judges (Hans-Joachim Frey, Ben Heppner, Peter Kazaras, Pamela Rosenberg, Stephen Wadsworth, and Eva Wagner-Pasquier) awarded their two $15,000 prizes to South African soprano Elza van den Heever and Swedish tenor Michael Weinius, and the audience decision also went to Ms Van den Heever.

Both of these singers, I agree, had their points, though I found the soprano’s voice a shade wavery and uneven and the tenor’s lacking in individuality. Neither, at any rate, struck me as possessing a voice capable of commanding the Wagnerian sound-stage. There are, in any case, many different aspects involved in judging a singer. Vocal allure, obviously, is one of them; others are vocal technique, musical style, expressive insight, and diction. Then there is the one that really matters: what does the singer in question do to the audience–in a word, communication.

In that regard, so far as I was concerned, this competition was no contest. The German mezzo-soprano Nadine Weissmann demonstrated a riveting ability to hold her listeners (not just me, I’m sure) in the palm of her hand, as she delivered sumptuously sung and truly Wagnerian accounts of Erda’s “Weiche, Wotan, weiche” from Das Rheingold and Waltraute’s Narrative from Götterdämmerung.

I recognize that there’s many a slip ’twixt prize and career. It seems that James Rutherford, who was pretty well everybody’s choice two years ago, is not doing as well in terms of engagements as some of the singers he defeated in that first competition. But of all this years’ eight finalists, I have no hesitation in naming Ms Weissmann as the one I most fervently hope to hear in future Wagner performances–and the orchestra members, I am happy to say, agreed with me in making her their choice. Among the other singers, I thought American Jason Collins–a splendid Steersman in the company’s Fliegende Holländer last season–made the best case for himself, with a spirited performance of excerpts from Die Walküre and Parsifal, though he was rather over the top in terms of garb and gesture.

This competition took place during the company’s run of Aida, and thus against the background of that opera’s set. There was a touch of irony about hearing Wagner’s orchestration in the environment where Verdi’s clean-as-a-whistle score had been heard a few days earlier. But it was certainly no discredit to Asher Fisch (who with general director Speight Jenkins had chosen the finalists in the course of wide-ranging international auditions) that the Meistersinger overture, which began the evening, sounded so grandly obese–that’s the way Wagner wrote, and Fisch is indeed a superb Wagner interpreter, and a great asset in his role as Seattle Opera’s principal guest conductor.

Bernard Jacobson

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