This radio broadcast was “preserved” on acetates. You’ll hear then, that there are many breaks, sometimes at crucial moments. It just means that the person recording needed to take off the needle, remove one acetate, place another on the turntable, and place the needle back. In Act I, Lehmann enters at 30:33. Since this is “live”, she sounds more the actress than you’ve ever heard. At this point there is less surface noise, but for some reason the noise level changes from one section to another. This whole particular presentation can be tough on the ears, but be patient, listen for the music, ignore the noise, and often the next portion improves.
Metropolitan Opera House
January 16, 1937 Matinee Broadcast
DIE WALKÜRE {285}
Brünnhilde…………..Marjorie Lawrence
Siegmund…………….Lauritz Melchior
Sieglinde……………Lotte Lehmann
Wotan……………….Friedrich Schorr
Fricka………………Kerstin Thorborg
Hunding……………..Emanuel List
Gerhilde…………….Thelma Votipka
Grimgerde……………Irra Petina
Helmwige…………….Dorothee Manski
Ortlinde…………….Irene Jessner
Rossweisse…………..Ina Bourskaya
Schwertleite…………Anna Kaskas
Siegrune…………….Helen Olheim
Waltraute……………Doris Doe
Conductor……………Artur Bodanzky
Review of Olin Downes in The New York Times; SIEGLINDE IS SUNG BY LOTTE LEHMANN
She Scores in First Act of ‘Die Walküre’ as Presented at the Metropolitan; AUDIENCE IS ENTHUSIASTIC
Melchior Appears at His Best in Role of Siegmund and List Is the Hunding. A new element in the cast of “Die Walküre” – new, at least, for this season yesterday afternoon in the Metropolitan Opera House, gave the occasion the glamour and the thrill which can confer upon opera its maximum intensity. This was, in addition to Mr. Melchior’s superb Siegmund, the Sieglinde of Lotte Lehmann. These two artists, with the competent Hunding of Mr. List, held the audience fascinated and swept them off their feet with the final passages of the first act. As for this writer, who has been privileged to hear some great Sieglindes at the Metropolitan, and that within no distant date, he would sacrifice them all, great and small, high and low, for the glory, the sweep and the transfiguring emotion of Mme. Lehmann’s interpretation.