A price I've had to pay for living in Cornwall is the loss of daily contact with those who have similar tastes in opera and singers past and present (I'm sure that they exist down here in the South West; I'm just too busy at the moment to find them). In my days as a singer in London and abroad I worked in a certain West End shop where I was able to share my knowledge and enthusiasm with collectors, theatre and opera directors and advertising and film companies. One such collector I introduced to the lovely voice of Eleanor Steber. Miss Steber had once offered me some sound advice on singing as a career and gave me a couple of beautifully inscribed photos (now among my most treasured possessions) and I had always adored her no-nonsense, bang on the note style.
A recent visitor to my site was looking for a film of Lortzing's Zar und Zimmermann with Karl Ridderbusch (the soundtrack presumably being the BASF recording which I have for sale, since its booklet contains some rather nice photos of a production featuring Ridderbusch, Lucia Popp, Hermann Prey et al). Now there is a collector after my own heart!
I have never been able to understand the lack of interest in Lortzing's operas in the UK. I became hooked on Lortzing at the age of about seven when I was given an Arnold van Mill LP featuring arias by Lortzing, Nicolai, Weber, Beethoven and Cornelius. A sizable chunk of the recital was taken with van Bett's entrance aria O Sancta Justitia and the hilarious choral rehearsal scene which opens the last act. Some years later I learned the role of van Bett (no doubt in anticipation of a glittering career in Germany!) and I used to sing O Sancta Justitia as an audition piece in Britain, being complimented on choosing an aria that was 'off the beaten track'. 'Off the beaten track' it certainly ain't in Germany; I attended performances of the opera in Hamburg about twenty years ago and vividly remember seeing the audience members around me mouthing the words whilst enjoying the performance.
In many ways I feel sorry for other German baritones whose careers clashed with Fischer-Dieskau and Prey; the Hamburg Zar Peter was Franz Grundheber, a superb singing actor whose only LP I have is an unbelievably exciting Don Giovanni performed in German. Another underrated baritone is Roland Hermann whose vivid stage presence enlivened many a dull evening spent in continental opera houses. Hermann does crop up rather more frequently, his best performances being in eclectic works like Peer Gynt (Egk) and Der Vampyr (Marschner). Back to Ridderbusch, whom I first heard as Pogner in Karajan's Dresden Meistersinger, then as Fafner in the same conductor's Rheingold. His voice was surely too beautiful to portray black-hearted villains and to my ears he was at his best in recordings of operatic comedies where his larger-than-life stage presence seems to leap out of the grooves like a gigantic friendly woolly dog. His van Bett and Sir John Merry Wives of Windsor would cheer any opera lover abandoned on a desert island.