Look now: Pit camera catches Carlos Kleiber conducting
NewsThis is an improved 1976 video of the Liebestod from Bayreuth with the Swedish soprano Catarina Ligendza as Isolde.
Unmissable.
Don’t even try to look away.
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Improved? LOL:)
Could be worse. I found it very moving.
Before he looked like an old James Levine…
Even an inferior version would be vastly more interesting than the inelegant and uninspired standard of conducting, which no one cares about after the artists are long gone.
Sure, technically better recordings are endlessly made, produced, manufactured in factories. They mainly contain laboured efforts at being remotely interesting.
A better quality soundtrack was dubbed on. The video is the same as originally posted. This was posted to YouTube 3.5 years ago, Nothing new. I was at one of these performances. I didn’t even know who Kleiber was at the time! It was the most beautiful i very static) production I have ever seen.
Just great to have a view of Kleiber´s conducting of “Tristan”. It would have been wonderful to have a real “regular” filmed version, but even this is magic.
As is also Ligendza´s Isolde!
I am happy to have CDs from both 1974 and 1975 with the same cast in Bayreuth.
the 75 and 74 casts are not the same – in 74 abd 75 tristan is sung by the ill-fated swedish tenor helge brilioth while in 76 tristan was sung by spas wenkoff; also in 74 and 75 marke was sung by kurt moll while in 76 karl ridderbusch sang the part; imho ligendza in 76 was inferior to her performances in 74 and 75 – the usual result of someone undertaking a part for which the voice was not really well-suited
The 74 and 75 have the same cast. It came to changes in 1976, and Kleiber didn´t conduct all performances. Horst Stein took over, also all performances in 1977.
Just one more topic. Personally I found Ligendza an ideal Isolde, and she was a fantastic Brünnhilde in Frankfurt, conducted by Michael Gielen. Those performances were unfortunately not recorded.
This is not something new we can see those images in the documentary excellent I have to say (even if i’am not a member of the Kelber’s fan club) “Carlos Kleiber, I Am Lost To The World”. But the image quality is so bad that he’s looking like a ghost.
Thank you for posting this. He was indeed able to access somehow the “soul” of the music. I was privileged to be able to experience him in person in NY.
The greatest! A must see for every conductor. Music etched in space! What hands! What musicality! A wonder.
Thank you for posting this. I was fortunate enough to see him frequently in the 70s – his Rosenkavalier, Fledermaus and Traviata in Munich, his Otello in London and this Tristan in Bayreuth. He was a remarkable conductor and always a guarantor for a wonderful evening of music. Ligendza wasn’t the best perhaps, but she was always a reliable, believable and enjoyable Wagnerian.
The present holds some wonderful music and musicians for us. But in the past, Kleiber was one of those people whose next performance we would await with bated breath. Even if it was the fifth Rosenkavalier in Munich (with his right arm up on that low dividing wall between pit and orchestra seating as he swayed, conducting with his left the waltz at the end of Act II!!!).
Thanks again for this post.
Great independency of left and right hand. How he manages to keep beating a legato right hand main pulse, and infusing a subdivision “kleine Einheit” in three clear hard vertical beats with the left hand at a couple of places is masterful.
And only in Bayreuth can conductors completely forget about making “bella figura” to the audience and only serve the music. Whatever it takes.
This version derives from a collector who noticed that the 1974 Bayreuth broadcast was the same performance as this captured pit video. So he matched the audio to the video. That is the improvement and worth it.
I can not say that I care to see everything perfectly. what gets to my heart and soul is his gestures and control over the Libretto and the singer and orchestra. In Kliebers hands the Singer the orchestra and the music transcends the limitations of the Score.
Catarina Ligendza: great Swedish singer, must not be forgotten!
He has the grace and elegance of Baryshnikov, creating such beautiful, lyrical line and texture between the beats.
Oh, thank you so much for this! Such perfection! He was such a great conductor, and she, a great singer! They don’t make them like that anymore.
Look at that manic then seraphic grin! Having the time of his life.
Thank you!
This is exquisite. Thank you for posting it.