CHAN 3045
Second Day of the Festival Play:
The Ring of the Nibelung
Music drama in three acts
Poem by Richard Wagner
English translation by Andrew Porter


The Cast

Alberto Remedios, tenor - Siegfried
Gregory Dempsey, tenor - Mime
Norman Bailey, bass-baritone - Wanderer
Derek Hammond-Stroud, baritone - Alberich
Clifford Grant, bass - Fafner
Anne Collins, contralto - Erda
Rita Hunter, soprano - Brünnhilde
Maurine London, soprano - Voice of the Woodbird
Sadler's Wells Opera Orchestra
Barry Tuckwell - solo horn
Reginald Goodall - conductor
Recorded live at the London Coliseum
2, 8 & 21 August 1973
Producer - Robert Kinloch Anderson
Sound engineers - Stuart Eltham & Robert Gooch
Siegfried
Gramophone

'Remedios's fresh, lyrical singing is a joy from start to finish; nobody since has equalled him as Siegfried. Dempsey's Mime is at once subtle, funny but menacing. Bailey's articulate and eloquent assumption (of Wotan) has not since been surpassed. Then to crown the performance we have Rita Hunter's glorious Brünnhilde, so luminously and keenly sung, just about on a par with Nilsson in the role.'
BBC Music Magazine

'Goodall's conducting (was) spacious... and always allowing room for the score's many voices, human and instrumental, to breathe and flourish. he had a cast to match, led by Norman Bailey's questing Wotan and Rita Hunter's radiant Brünnhilde, her voice as bright and shining as the sunlight she salutes on wakening. As for Alberto Remedios's boyishly carefree wildchild of a Siegfried, does any other tenor on disc sing the role with such unflaggingly fresh, sweet yet heroic tone?'