Ewig war ich

Horst Stein, Bayreuth Festival Orchestra
(Recorded 29th July, 1971, Bayreuth Festival Theatre)

Siegfried — Jean Cox
Brünnhilde — Catarina Ligendza

The production was directed by Wolfgang Wagner.

This excerpt comes from a CD dedicated to Jean Cox which came free with a 2002 issue of “Opernwelt” Magazine. The audio restoration was made using the original tapes from the Bayerischer Rundfunk archives. The complete performance is available elsewhere on Youtube, but the sound quality is inferior to this excerpt.

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ACT 3, Scene 3:

03:21 — “Heil dir, Sonne!”
07:09 — “O Siegfried! Siegfried! seliger Held!”
08:39 — “So starb nicht meine Mutter?”
08:54 — “Du wonniges Kind!”
11:33 — “Wie Wunder tönt, was wonnig du sing’st”
13:14 — “Dort seh’ ich Grane, mein selig Ross”
16:55 — “Kein Gott nahte mir je!”
18:56 — “Mir schwirren die Sinne”
19:14 — “Sang’st du mir nicht, dein Wissen sei”
20:15 — “Nacht umfängt gebund’ne Augen”
21:29 — “Ewig war ich, ewig bin ich”
26:15 — “Dich lieb ich: o liebtest mich du!”
27:58 — “O Siegfried! Dein war ich von je!”
29:15 — “Ob jetzt ich dein?”
30:40 — “Wie des Blutes Ströme sich zünden”

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Stephan Mösch writes:

First there was Wolfgang Windgassen, after him came René Kollo. This covered the Wagnerian tenor subject as far as the record companies were concerned. This has nothing to do with the art and skill of Jean Cox. But it led to the grotesque fact that the formative Siegfried of his generation is not documented in any overall recording. As far as the Bayreuth Festival is concerned, it is similar: first there was Wieland Wagner's “Ring” production from 1965, which had acquired the character of a “last will and testament” due to the early death of the director. Then, from 1976, Patrice Chéreau caused a scandal. But exactly in between are the Bayreuth glory years of Cox as Siegfried. In 1970 Wolfgang Wagner's production came out, and many Brünnhildes tried their hand at it: the conductors Horst Stein and Jean Cox were not just the constants, but also the guarantors of quality until 1975. Of all the “Siegfried” presentations that Bayerischer Rundfunk had broadcast live in those years, the one of July 29th, 1971 has the greatest tension — and the greatest finale.
Jean Cox and Caterina Ligendza complement each other in timbre, in the youthfulness and naturalness of their charisma (this is also conveyed purely vocally), in the security of their vocal leadership. How Ligendza uses the ascending semitone that Wagner uses for the word “Liebe” (“...mir war es nur Liebe zu dir!”) for a diminuendo! This can be seen as a detail in the fine elaboration of this entire final scene. Ligendza and Cox are concerned with inner states of experience, and both need little external vocal drama for this (as is often used in this scene). In this way, Cox can capture Siegfried's urging (“Oh Weib, jetzt lösche den Brand!”) without excessive declamation, entirely within the sung phrases. And Ligendza sings “Ewig war ich, ewig bin ich” by no means as a direct address to the partner, but lets a cloudy, reflective tone resonate: Brünnhilde searches in her memory, she invents a new thought. The fact that one can hear this process makes the famous passage, the lyricism of which many sopranos feel self-satisfied, exciting again. Horst Stein is a congenial partner, fine-tuning the dynamics with the singers and distinguishing very precisely between “piano” and “piu piano”. Despite all the shading, he and the festival orchestra preserve the large folds that the score needs here. The word much invoked today of “chamber music”, which Wagner actually wrote and which only often remains undiscovered, just doesn't work: it's about the finest nuances WITHIN an opulent musical sentence structure and not about its fundamental screwing back. In this sense, Stein works no differently than Hans Knappertsbusch, whose assistant he was for a long time. And as with his “Ring” recordings, this “Siegfried” also has the feeling that everything is “right” in a completely unspectacular way. That alone is a sensation today.

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Siegfried is a music drama in three acts by Richard Wagner with a German libretto by the composer. It is the third of the four works that form Wagner's cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. It received its premiere at the Bayreuth Festival Theatre on 16th August 1876.