The Voice of Christ
The Catholic Online Magazine
In Memoriam
Martha Mödl
March 22, 1912 – December 16th, 2001
“ I do not know myself how I sing “
Almost 22 years ago, in 1981 I saw “ The Queen of Spades “ by P.I. Tchaikovsy at Teatro Colón. I was then studying at the Opera School of the famous opera house and I could many times watch the rehearsals from a cautious distance in the upper levels of this luxurious theater. There were many prestigious artists onstage but the star was, doubtlessly Martha Mödl, who at 69 had a glorious past as Wagnerian soprano in Bayreuth and all the world, and was a living legend whom I had never had the privilege to hear in her prime.
The first few phrases she sang in the role of the Old Countess showed a huge but very unsteady voice though her stage presence partly compensated for the loss in firmness and beauty of tone in what arrived to our ears as the remnants of a wonderful and rich instrument. The Countess is a role often sung by old singers because their real vocal decay can be used as characterization of old age. Martha Mödl had a great reputation as a ‘ singing - actress ‘. The term was probably created many decades ago when divas had the musicality and the vocal shine but were also of the ‘ stand and deliver’ class. So in bygone eras, good acting was a ‘ plus ‘ and people were wiling to forgive tenors, baritones, sopranos, Basses or mezzo- sopranos who stood stolidly on stage and just boasted the glory of their voices, perhaps adding melodramatic and unconvincing gestures like outstretching of arms in order to show joy or a hand in the forehead as a way of expressing grief, or terror…. Nowadays opera singers are much more interested on acting and the term ‘ singing actor/actress is almost redundant, yet even with the highest standards of today Miss Mödl would be a very special case, a true ‘ tragedienne ‘.
Her conviction when uttering those first wobbly phrases was such that we, the audience at Teatro Colón, felt not pity for the vocal decay of the artist but were fascinated by the power of a great personality and immersed in the projection of a role.
The best was to come nearing the end of the opera ( III Act ) when Hermann, the tortured gambler, enters the Countess' room and demands imperiously of her the famous secret of the three cards. Previous to his dramatic intrusion the Countess has been left by her servants and has an intimate evocation of her more glorious and youthful days which Miss Mödl conveyed marvelously. We were absolutely fascinated by her remembrances of her days in France and her friends like the ‘ Duchesse d’ Orleans’. Mödl made us understand that her nostalgia reflected a sort of foggy vision of something terrible to come, yet always keeping the elegance and ‘ grandeur ‘ of a great aristocrat. She is very upset by Hermann’s impulsive entrance and they have a discussion. The aggressive and unbalanced man takes a pistol with which he threatens the old woman, and she dies… of sheer terror. It was a moment I will not forget for as long as I live. You could drop a pin, hear it touch the floor, for almost 3000 who had ‘ accompanied ‘, almost with tears in their eyes, the remembrances of the Countess a few minutes earlier, were now in total terror for the possible death of the old woman. With a few rigid and quick gestures the Countess tried to escape from her aggressor, trying to get out of her chair just to fall down again with a fulminating heart attack.
When Miss Mödl took her final solo bow in front of the curtain there was a huge, unforgettable ovation. The orchestra applauded her, the singer who had sung Hermann also did the same. There was much gratefulness for her fantastic and generous performance, there was the reverence towards a living legend too, but she deserved every decibel of that ovation on the basis of what she had just created onstage.
MARTHA MÖDL AS KUNDRY IN " PARSIFAL "
Miss Mödl's voice had been one of those rare cases in which the classification of the register was very difficult. Many claim that she was always a mezzo soprano with an exceptionally good upper range. Others say she was a true ‘ dramatic soprano ‘. I agree with the mezzo theory. Revising articles on her for this article I found out just looking at the list of roles she sung in her younger years, that it was even then a problematic thing to give her roles.
She was born in Nüremberg and worked as a secretary till she was 28, making her debut in Remscheid in 1942. Some of the roles she sang in those years were openly mezzo-soprano, like Azucena in “ Il Trovatore “ by Giuseppe Verdi, or Klytemnestra in “ Elektra “ by Richard Strauss at the Düsseldorf Opera , of which she was a member since 1945 to 1949. Others belong to an ‘ amphibious’ register like the Composer of “ Ariadne auf Naxos” by Richard Strauss ( sopranos like Irmgard Seefried or Sena Jurinac sang it, but also high mezzos like Tatyana Troyanos or the wonderful Christa Ludwig ). Then there are those Mozart roles like Cherubino or Dorabella.
Martha Mödl as Isolde
In those years the teachers used to put singers in a lighter repertoir as soon as they heard some top notes, sometimes forcing them ‘ up ‘ ( today it is all the contrary, as soon as they hear some rich central or low note they force unusually elastic voices ‘ down ).
In my opinion some teacher weighed the size of Miss Mödl’s voice, plus her rich center and the easy top notes and suggested she take the dramatic soprano repertoir, which she did in roles like Elektra or Brünhilde in “ The Ring” or Lady Macbeth in Verdi’s “ Macbeth “. But it is NOT the same to reach for some high, top notes, from a lower ‘ tessitura ‘ than to be singing all time in a higher tessitura. When a singer who has the B’s and the C’s in order ( and her technique is solid ) ‘ suffers ‘ when singing a role a wise teacher should put her to work in a lower tessitura. If the so-called soprano dos not suffer anymore the problem was not technical, the problem was that she was definitely not a soprano, but a mezzo !
Mödl’s career was very long but… her glory as a soprano was quite short . She started in 1949 ( when she was 37 ) and as soon as the late fifties she began to find very difficult to hold the soprano roles ( people who heard her sing the Brünhilde at Teatro Colón told me she was quite exhausted after the performance.
Martha Mödl as Leonore in " Fidelio" by Ludwig van Beethoven
Anyhow she has left her mark of one of the greatest dramatic sopranos of the XX century. And when the vocal problems in that range became too serious she ‘ switched back ‘ to the original mezzo register.
In those 10 or twelve years of glory as soprano she performed with many of the greatest opera conductors in the world like Hans Knappertsbusch, Hebert von Karajan, Bruno Walter, Wilhelm Furtwängler and many others, and her performances in the mythic Bayreuth Festival are treasured by Wagnerians and opera lovers.
One of her roles was that of Kundry , on which they say that Siegmund Freud illustrated his studies on hysteria. Kundry is a wild woman created by an occultist called Klingsor who wants her as ‘ temptress’ of Parsifal, Christian Knight. Her seduction not only fails, and she abandons every unholy attack on Parsifal, but also her eroticism is sublimated into a mild, new personality who only worships the Lord, Our Saviour. It is a role of unusual expressive and vocal range and everybody said that the best Kundry was Miss Mödl. She had that ability to ‘ seal’ a role, to make it her own, which is what happened with the Countess.
I wished I could have witnessed all her glorious vocal years - when she was in her prime - but it was impossible because then I was too little to be taken to an opera house. Besides she did not come very often to Teatro Colón, as far as I know.
By the early 60’s Birgit Nilsson had outshone both the German Mödl and the Swedish-American Astrid Varnay. Nilsson’s voice was much lighter, with a thrilling and very easy top ( her glory as a singer ), yet not so much passion or acting ability ( though she reached great heights in those areas too ) Varnay and Mödl had been rivals in the fifties, and the next fashion and substitution was Nilsson. There was a very funny chat between the three ladies discussing their careers in front of the microphones of the German radio. The meeting was dominated by mutual respect and admiration. Only occasionally one can read in the written version of that ‘ round table ‘, a hint – just a very tiny bit - of jealousy, for people who work in the German repertory are mostly concentrated on work than on their egos. It would have been impossible such a meeting with three Italian divas of the same fame and/or rank. Astrid Varnay of the oceanic soprano voice, the fantastic Nilsson and the richly voiced and talented Martha Mödl relive their past in Bayreuth with joy and relish.
MARTHA MÖDL AS PRINCESS OF EBOLI IN "DON CARLOS" BY. G.VERDI
A great artist like Mödl can dominate a whole performance in a role which is comparatively short and I am sure that even if she had to come as a maid and sing : Dinner is served “ Miss Mödl would have interested us for the intensity of her expression and for her powerful stage presence.
After that unforgettable performance of “ The Queen of Spades by Tchaikovsky I met her at the stage door and asked her for an autograph. She looked a bit older than her age ( 69 at that time )… or was it that she was such a great actress that she could not get rid of the role ? I asked her how she created those climaxes, how did she achieved that greatness as an actress. It was obvious that I flattered her, that she liked the appraisal but she soon concentrated on the answer, which did not come out. “ I do not know, it is… I have it…I think it is … “ I helped her : “ A gift ? “ She felt a relief: “ Yes, yes a gift…! “ I went on: “ Gott ? “… and she humbly and with a slight smile said: Yes, a gift from God ! “. And I finally said something in my “Tarzan-esque “ German (which I hope to have improved by now… )...” Nicht Kopf ! “ ( not the head, not your brains used for acting ) And Miss Mödl almost stuttering agreed : “ Ja, Ja.. nicht Kopf “
This monumental artist had a childish thing in her personality, she was all instinct. No hint of pretention, of fake talent. The most talented artists are often very simple . And… she gave the Lord the credit for all that greatness. She was a mystery to herself. The same woman who had fascinated the world as Isolde, Kundry, Octavian, Azucena, Lady Macbeth, the Nurse in Frau ohne Schatten, Elektra and Klytemnaestra in Elektra by Strauss, Leonore in Fidelio, Dorabella, etc,etc, was somehow admitting that she did not know HOW she did it.
You may argue that she was referring to acting, but read what she said about her singing and which I quoted above :
“ I do not know myself how I sing “
Martha Mödl died in December 16 , 2001, nearing 90 years of age ( her 90th Birthday would have been on March 22, 2002. I do not know much about her life, but that memorable Countess at Teatro Colón was enough for me. I saw that ‘ rara avis ‘ onstage: a true artist. And I have learned a lot about her while preparing this article.
Maybe she was a greater artist because she admitted ( in a natural, not overemotional way ) that all she had offered us was.. a gift of God
Ricardo Ortale
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