100Singers's video: 100 Singers - THOMAS STEWART

Thomas Stewart, Bass-Baritone (1928-2006) Wagner: DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG "Wahn, Wahn, überall Wahn!" Conducted by Rafael Kubelik / Recorded 1967 My personal opinion: A guy built like a tree with the memorable facial traits of a Viking: With this physiognomy, the American bass-baritone Thomas Stewart seemed to have sprung from the Norse Myth World. One would almost like to assume, a career as a Wagner singer was therefore preprogrammed. But it was not quite so simple: Stewart decision to concentrate on Wagner came from the wise realization that he was not well suited for Italian opera. His was not the voice of a true heroic baritone, because it lacked volume in the low and middle registers and sounded a bit flat. Stewart's strength was not the exhibition of a full and rich instrument (which he did not possess), but a striking eloquence. His voice was heroic only in expression, not in its constitution. But there was a special force in his singing, an authority that made you forget limitations. Due to distinctive phrasing, Stewart was able to pretend more vocal material than really was there (an idiosyncrasy we also find in the German Siegmund Nimsgern). Thomas Stewart's voice did not have the weight and rounding that a Verdi baritone indispensably needs. And to be honest, his sometimes rough singing had only little warmth. When he sang of love, for instance in the Mozart duet "Là ci darem la mano" with his wife Evelyn Lear, it sounded a bit sterile. As I said, Stewart was a singer of expressive phrasing, not a deliverer of feelings. He could sing of romance, but not make it believable with an inner fire. I compare this with the rational and undercooled Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who always delivered his interpretations soberly like a narrator from the outside, while his competitor Hermann Prey became the character he embodied and gave a lively and warm perspective from within. Already in the early 1960s, Stewart decided to devote himself increasingly to Wagner; a development that reached its first climax with Amfortas, Donner and Gunther in Bayreuth. Some time later Stewart added Holländer and Wolfram. In 1967 he sang Wotan at the Salzburg Festival under Karajan and in studio recordings of DIE WALKÜRE and SIEGFRIED. The German critic Jürgen Kesting did not give a good review: "Stewart offers a studied and academic interpretation without sensuality. His singing has no lyrical warmth ..." Having already sung at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and Covent Garden, Stewart joined the Metropolitan Opera in March 1966, where he soon sang Wolfram in TANNHÄUSER alongside Birgit Nilsson. In his book about the "Met Broadcasts", Paul Jackson wrote that Stewart's prosaic handling of the Abendstern was "a major disappointment. The technical aspect of Thomas Stewart's singing is less impressive than his intelligent character portrayal; a firm legato and control over variety of dynamics seem underdeveloped. The memory of the great Wolframs of Metropolitan broadcast history (Tibbett, Bonelli, Janssen) is too potent to allow to praise Stewart's sturdy, but matter-of-fact reading ..." An elegiac role, sung by a non-elegiac singer? Not the best of all combinations ... It's all the more a pity, because Stewart was a very likeable man with a strong stage presence. In "The American Opera Singer" wrote Peter G. Davis, that the singer left his audience well satisfied, "even if they not have heard an especially glamorous voice." As for me, I share the views of all the aforementioned critics. Like every human being, a singer is also (and especially) a creature of his nerves and dependent on the condition of the day. Stewart moves me only rarely, but he is excellent in a 1967 recording of MEISTERSINGER, produced by "Bayerischer Rundfunk", led by Rafael Kubelik and originally scheduled for release by "Deutsche Grammophon". It's a performance of hardly repeatable orchestral opulence with all singers at the peak of their abilities. Surrounded by a dream-cast (Janowitz, Fassbaender, Kónya, Unger), Stewart sings a trenchant Hans Sachs. He articulates the lyrics not only concisely and idiomatically, but also with a fine sense of the subtext - his shoemaker is mastersinger, humanist, sentimentalist and philosopher all in once. It is one of those moments when a contestable singer gives an above-average performance. Therefore my choice for a music selection was easy: Here Thomas Stewart sings the great Act III monologue "Wahn, Wahn, überall Wahn!", in which Sachs meditates about men's foolishness and how he can use it to reach his goals: A mid-16th century workman with an Arthur Schopenhauer ideology ... Wagner made it possible!