SIMON O’NEILL Father and Son
and Parsifal.
Simon O’Neill (Lohengrin, Parsifal, Siegfried, Siegmund), Susan Bullock (Sieglinde, Kundry), John Tomlinson (Hagen), Thomas Grace (Gunther), NBR New Zealand Opera Chapman Tripp Chorus, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra / Pietari Inkinen.
EMI Classics 4 57817 2
The title Father and Son might suggest that this is a duet disc, but in fact father-son duets are nowhere present in these or any other Wagner operas. Rather, the arresting premise brings together fathers and sons who inhabit different operas: Parsifal and Lohengrin, Siegmund and Siegfried.
The fast-rising heldentenor Simon O’Neill has chosen a generous portion of music and sings it splendidly as he keeps the focus squarely on the four personages, notwithstanding his able guest performers. After ‘Winterstürme’ Susan Bullock is denied ‘Du bist der Lenz’; instead the music skips to a rousing ‘Siegmund heiss ich’. And in the eponymous Siegfried’s extended monologue before the final duet, the music breaks off just before the E minor-C major chord progression that signals Brünnhilde’s awakening – the moment people in the theater wait hours for.
No matter. It’s good to have the spotlight trained on other music for a change, especially when the singing is as clarion-voiced and insightful as O’Neill’s. Vocal strength in a Wagner tenor often seems to be prized above tonal beauty, so it is always a pleasure to hear Wagner sung with the vocal clarity and ring we expect from tenors in Italian opera. O’Neill’s voice is exceptionally bright and focused – here and there one wishes he might darken it a bit. But the singing is highly consistent and energized by dramatic involvement and excellent diction.
The Siegfried monologue shows the hero in an unusually sympathetic light – he learns the meaning of fear only when gazing on a woman – and O’Neill’s alert delivery conveys Siegfried’s alarm, agitation, vulnerability and, ultimately, re-found confidence. It fascinatingly pairs with the Götterdämmerung Act 3 narration, in which Siegfried recounts the same scene, and particularly so in his dying moments, when we hear the awakening chords we were deprived of earlier and the hero tenderly hails Brünnhilde in his final breath, all sung with genuine eloquence by O’Neill. The juxtaposition allows one to view Siegfried from a new perspective and, with the help of absorbing performances of the ‘Rhine Journey’ and the ‘Funeral Music’ from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra under Pietari Inkinen, a reasonably full one; yet we never hear a note from Brünnhilde.
The selections are presented in chronological order of composition, so that son Lohengrin and father Parsifal are separated by the Ring excerpts, which is fine, since only a few words from Lohengrin – decisively delivered by O’Neill – link the two operas. When it finally comes, O’Neill’s vivid, intensely felt ‘Amfortas! Die Wunde!’ proves well worth the wait. The excellent recorded sound is favorable both to voice and orchestra.
