Elisabeth Hoengen, contralto = VERDI: Macbeth: “Dieser Flecken kommt immer wieder”; Il Trovatore: “Wir sind allen nun!”; “Schlaefst du, o Mutter?”; Aida: “Wer steigt beim Klang der Hymnen”; BIZET: Carmen: “Ja, die Liebe hat bunte Fluegel”; SAINT-SAENS: “Die Sonne, sie lachte”; “Mein Herz erschliebesset sich”; WAGNER: Goetterdaemmerung: “Seit et von dir geschieden”; R. STRAUSS: Elektra: “Ich will nichts hoeren!” – Elisabeth Hoengen, contralto/Walther Ludwig, tenor/ Christel Goltz, soprano/Annelies Kupper. soprano/ Ferdinand Leitner & Sir Georg Solti (R. Strauss) conductors
Preiser 93465, 76:10 [Distr. by Albany] ****:
Mezzo-soprano Elisabeth Hoengen (1906-1997) achieved note both at the Vienna State Opera and at the MET, where her versatility took in forty-four roles in Vienna and numerous appearances in the Strauss Elektra (as Clytemnestra) at the MET. Her dramatic work in Bayreuth, Salzburg, and in Edinburgh established her throaty, durable vocalism (from high C to low G) as the stuff from which heroic Wagner roles–and a vibrant Lady Macbeth–are forged, as in Fricka, Waltraute, and Ortrud. I first encountered her lovely fluent voice in a Beethoven Ninth led by Jascha Horenstein.
This fine Preiser issue captures Hoengen’s refined art in recordings made 1950-1952, all but the Elektra led by the veteran Ferdinand Leitner. The disc opens with Lady Macbeth’s Mad Scene (1951), a Hoengen specialty. Convinced that she cannot wash away drops of King Duncan’s blood, Lady Macbeth shares her paranoia guilt, as overheard by the Doctor (Gustav Grefe) and a female attendant (Hetty Pluemacher). The orchestral tissue, in broken string chords, delineates her mental dissolution. The eerie disassociations and images of gore quite raise our emotional hackles. Two excerpts from Verdi’s Il Trovatore (1951) follow, graced by Hoengen’s brilliant work with tenor Walther Ludwig. The gypsy color in Hoengen’s Azucena rings with wicked authority, a nervous energy quite competitive with Zinka Milanov’s renditions at the MET. If we can “forgive” the German language its approximation of the Italian original, the collaboration remains staggering in its dramatic intensity. Hoengen’s chest tone in the aria-cavatina “Does thou sleep, Mother?” with Ludwig resonates with pathos mixed with her indomitable will. Chorus and ballet music precede Aida’s reflections (1951) Act II, Scene 1 of battle and glory, torn as she is between filial duty and erotic desire. Her plaints provide an effective foil–along with the triumphal sounds of the revered military–to the Priestess sung by Annelies Kupper.
Hoengen, like many spinto mezzo-sopranos, favored the role of Carmen, and her habanera (1952) taunts and retreats with her feline cunning on the torments of love, especially since Carmen savors playing with her victims. The subsequent entry of the “fate” motif reminds us that even a cat may be caught in her own trap. Music from the priestesses of Dagon invokes the sultry world of Samson and Delilah (1950), from which Hoengen sings two arias, the more famous of which, “My Heart at Thy Sweet Voice,” displays the tragically sensuous Hoengen at her finest. The most extended of the excerpts derives from Hoengen’s 1952 incarnation as the vengeful Clytemnestra, the scene in which she excoriates Electra (soprano Christel Goltz) for any compassion for the hapless Agamemnon, who must suffer Clytemnestra’s insatiable malignant rage for having sacrificed Iphigenia so as to launch Greek ships to Troy. In the Wagner excerpt from The Twilight of the Gods, Hoengen shares with the classical veterans Maria Olszewska and Rosette Anday a vivid sense of characterization, the words “Since he parted from you. . .” dire with the death of Siegfried and the fate of the gods themselves. Even after sixty years, these inscriptions move us with their artistic truth and vocal prowess.
–Gary Lemco
