The Night the Wagnerian Tenor Was More Like Handel than Verdi and Why That Surprises Us and Why We Care

I'll admit it-- I'm no expert on Wagner.  I'm hardly conversant in Wagner.  And while standing in the lobby through long intermissions at Lohengrin at the Deutsch Oper, it was obvious-- one must be conversant in Wagner.  Fortunately or unfortunately, my Deutsch limitations masked my Wagner limitations and my input was impressionistic at best.  Expert or not, one thing was abundantly clear: we were in the presence of a star.

Once again, the opera revolution we were expecting to see was something in the realm of Lohengrin birthing an alien as part of lucid dream in a grocery store, etc, etc, usw, usw.  Genau.  Instead, the revolution seemed to exist in this placid, crystal-toned man: emerging with his wings so large they upstaged the set itself and yet so delicate, it was as if they were shivering to even be exposed.  These wings were his voice: strong in power and focus, and ethereal like a beam of light straight through the mammoth orchestra.  Floating, yes, but more human than that.  His name is Klaus Florian Vogt.  He encapsulates what I would imagine the allure of a castrato was: a man with physical prowess and depth of support of a sound that would be fragile, simple.  Vulnerability in stereo-- like watching a child's face on a movie screen.  I guess I feel lucky that I had no expectation for what Lohengrin should sound like because this fit seemed ideal.  Our lobby friend from Hamburg said, "we love him because he's closer to Handel than Verdi"-- so he shows us how Wagner isn't just heavy and loud, he's poised and profound.

So there we are: the American spies into this vast German cultural machine, having arrived at the Mother Ship.  And yet again we are handed a surprise.  It would seem that the larger houses are supremely interested in exact fach, exact timbre, exact type.  Success for a singer is to reliably epitomize those things.  But their star-- an anomaly-- someone who takes this role that is most iconic and makes all those lobby experts listen anew.