Karajan artists: Thomas Stewart – breakfast with Wotan

“Stewart is already Wotan while eating his breakfast.”
Karajan about Thomas Stewart

The singer who sang Wotan in the “Ring” studio recordings must have been a special one for Karajan. Thomas Stewart (1928 – 2006) was one of the most distinguished Wagner singers of his time. He appeared in every part of Karajan’s “Ring” productions between 1967 and 1973 and in three parts of the recordings. Their collaboration started with Wotan in the “Valkyrie”, for the opening of the first ever Salzburg Easter Festival. As so often, Karajan produced the recording first and then used it as playback for the rehearsals. When asked whether this procedure was odd for him, Stewart answered: “No, the benefit was that in rehearsal I didn’t need to think about my singing but only about the performance, my gestures, my moves etc.”

It went fine in 1967, not only at the Easter Festival in Spring but also in three performances at the Metropolitan Opera. Karajan had developed a very early form of coproduction system and presented some parts of his “Ring” (not all of them) in New York in the autumn after the Easter Festival. In the following year in Salzburg – Karajan changed the order of the operas – Stewart wasn’t Wotan in “Rheingold”, neither at the Easter Festival nor in the studio. It was Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. But Stewart sang the part in New York the same year, so this was obviously the moment when Stewart had to rehearse with Fischer-Dieskau’s recording. Many years later, for their last collaboration, he also performed Wotan in Karajan’s “Rheingold” film in 1978 and on two occasions at the Easter Festival in 1973. For the rest of the “Ring” Stewart was regularly booked:

recording “Siegfried” with Stewart as Wanderer/Wotan in February 1969, staged at the Salzburg Easter Festival in March 1969
recording “Götterdämmerung” with Stewart as Gunther in January 1970, staged at the Salzburg Easter Festival in March 1970

Watch here Thomas Stewart talking about the rehearsals for “The Valkyrie”.

—  P.R. Jenkins