Opera on the Move in the Nordic Countries during the Long 19th ...

The introduction of Richard Wagner’s music dramas in Stockholm
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conversation, Die Meistersinger could have been classed among the best of
comic operas (AB 9/4 1887).
The cuts in Die Meistersinger affected the part of Hans Sachs more than
any other, and as a consequence, according to some of the critics, the character
was not given its due importance in the drama. Lindgren pointed out
(AB 4/4 1887) that some of these cuts were made between the dress rehearsal
and the first night, supposedly because the part was too low for the
singer Carl Fredrik Lundqvist (“Lunkan”), or because he was indisposed.
Irrespective of the reason, however, Lindgren considered the cuts well
founded, “especially the removal of Sachs’s trying monologue in the first
scene of the last act.” However, not everyone agreed with him on this, and
Fredrik Vult von Steijern (DN 9/4 1887) hoped for the return of the glorious
soliloquy.
Adolf Lindgren estimated that the cuts in Die Walküre comprised about
60 of the 360 pages in the vocal score, and above all they concerned the
dialogues between Wotan and Fricka, and between Wotan and Brünnhilde in
the second act, together with the conversation among the Valkyries and with
Wotan in the third act (AB 8/11 1895). 13 In his view, these cuts shortened
the acts in a commendably thoughtful manner, and the one in the dialogue
between Wotan and Brünnhilde in the second act was especially successful.
This was also the view of Magnus Josephson (PIT 13/11 1895):
“In Die Walküre, for instance, it is only the part of Wotan that contains
some dry declamatory passages, and these are usually cut: the long narration
(the recapitulation of the content in Das Rheingold) in the scene
with Brünnhilde, a gruesome longueur which probably no one misses, is
an example.”
All the critics who mentioned the cuts viewed them in a positive light,
and some even thought they could have been even more extensive. For
instance, the Stockholms Dagblad (8/11 1895) critic wrote that, despite the
cuts, the work still contained longueurs. Adolf Lindgren (AB 8/11 1895)
was also of the opinion that it might be advisable to make more cuts in the
dialogue between Siegmund and Brünnhilde, “because this scene carries
on too long at a slow tempo.” However, there was one cut he considered
less successful. It was not Fricka’s claim about the sanctity of marriage or
the reprehensibility of incest that made Wotan change his mind and decide
that Siegmund had to die: it was purely the result of Fricka’s proving that,
13 The sources in the archive of the Royal Swedish <strong>Opera</strong> probably made it possible for
future researchers to establish precisely where the cuts were made.