Part of the Wagnerism Audiovisual Companion. Most audio samples are by kind permission of Pristine Classical.
Willa Cather.
p. 323: Fricka sings of the “wonniger Hausrath,” the “blissful household,” from which Wotan wanders:
Ira Malaniuk in Krauss’s 1953 Ring at Bayreuth (Pristine).
p. 324: The end of Fricka’s exchange with Wotan in Act II of Walküre, with the ten-bar orchestral passage at 1:55.
Ira Malaniuk and Hans Hotter in Krauss’s 1953 Ring at Bayreuth (Pristine).
Another version of this moment:
Simone Young conducting the Hamburg Philharmonic, from a recording of Die Walküre on the Oehms label; Jeanne Piland is Fricka, Falk Struckmann is Wotan.
Brünnhilde’s “All things, all things, all things I know,” in her final monologue.
Astrid Varnay in Krauss’s 1953 Ring at Bayreuth (Pristine).
p. 326: Two pictures of the Willa Cather Memorial Prairie; Cather’s childhood home in Red Cloud; her attic bedroom.
p. 327: Music of Louis Schindelmeisser, father of Albert Schindelmeisser, Willa Cather’s piano teacher.
Schindelmeisser in Red Cloud, from the Red Cloud Chief of May 15, 1885.
A final glimpse of Prof. Schindelmeisser, in Nashville, in 1898.
p. 331: Among the singers that Cather heard sing Wagner in Pittsburgh in 1899 were Ernestine Schumann-Heink:
Lilli Lehmann, with whom Thea Kronborg studies in The Song of the Lark:
Andreas Dippel:
From the UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive.
And Anton von Rooy:
From the UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive.
p. 335: The celebrated tenor Leo Slezak sings the Prize Song from Meistersinger in 1910.
From the UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive.
p. 339: Some recordings of Olive Fremstad, which plainly do not capture the expressive power of her voice, never mind her potent stage presence. The Liebestod:
“Du bist der Lenz” from Walküre:
And “Dich, teure Halle” from Tannhäuser:
p. 342: A note from Olive Fremstad to Willa Cather, in the Willa Cather Archive at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
p. 345: Jules Breton’s The Song of the Lark in full color, courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.
p. 346: The view from inside one of the cliff-dwellings in Walnut Canyon in Arizona.
