Karajan artists: Martha Mödl – the ultimate Klytämnestra

“He never wanted the heroines to sound like a trumpet and so he conducted considerately.”

For Karajan Martha Mödl was an indispensable singer in the 1950s and 60s. She worked with him at almost every crucial stage of his career after the war – Berlin, Salzburg, Bayreuth, Milan and the Vienna State Opera. She was one of the true Wagner and Strauss heroines who are needed in every generation and so rarely to be found.

Mödl (1912 – 2001) worked as a bookkeeper and secretary in Nuremberg and only started vocal lessons at the age of 28. Ten years later, in 1950, she made her debut as Kundry at La Scala and in 1951, she performed as Gutrune in “Götterdämmerung” with Karajan in his first Bayreuth season, the very first after the war. In the following winter she was Leonore in “Fidelio” with Karajan at La Scala, a perfect match that was repeated (and recorded) in a concert version in Vienna with an “exceptionally strong cast” (Richard Osborne) – Mödl, Windgassen, Schwarzkopf, Edelmann and Schock.

A highlight in both Karajan’s and Mödl’s career was the Bayreuth “Tristan und Isolde” in 1952. Mödl recalled in a tv interview in 1986:

“I liked Karajan a lot. I can only judge him by the time we spent together, four years at La Scala [in fact two]. He was such a fantastic musician. It was unbelievable. There is a live recording, ‘Tristan’ in Bayreuth in 1952. It’s a unique recording, I mean his performance. Today he is ill. I heard a lot about him in the meantime. But I would never say something against him.”

Richard Osborne even certified Mödl’s first act in the live recording to be a “classic example” of a combination of precision and passion in a Wagner interpretation. And it was again Wagner who brought Karajan and Mödl together at the Scala six months later. Mödl was Ortrud in Karajan’s only series of “Lohengrin” between the war and his last interpretation at the Salzburg Festival in 1976/1984. She was always interested in contemporary music and had already appeared in Stravinsky’s “Oedipus Rex” as Jokasta under the composer’s baton in Cologne in 1951. In 1956, she and Karajan performed it in Berlin and two years later at the Vienna State Opera. It was an exceptional event, for Karajan managed to engage the libretto’s author, Jean Cocteau, as the speaker for the premiere. In November the same year, Cocteau no longer appeared in this production but Stravinsky himself as conductor, again with Mödl. Karajan had prepared the orchestra very precisely which was necessary because Stravinsky was a genius as a composer but not as a conductor.

Between 1957 and 1960, Mödl interpreted the great parts she was famous for under Karajan’s baton at the State Opera – Isolde, Leonore in “Fidelio” and Brünnhilde in “Die Walküre” and “Siegfried”.

After Karajan’s resignation as manager of the State Opera, he worked once more with Mödl in a project that meant a lot to him – the Salzburg “Elektra” in 1964, his only production of it after the war. As a contribution to Richard Strauss’ centenary, he both conducted and directed the opera, one of his best-loved works. Mödl performed Klytämnestra. Her “daughter” on stage, Astrid Varnay in the title role, recalled in an interview: “His favourite character was Klytämnestra. He acted out the part for Martha Mödl. Every day. She had a big stick and she was supposed to fall and then pull herself up on this stick. And he showed her how to do it. Every time. We found this surprising until we realised he would have loved to hand the orchestra over to us and play Klytämnestra himself.” (Read the complete interview in the story about Astrid Varnay). Obviously, Mödl had nothing against his acting demonstrations:

“I even accepted him as a director. Some people say he wasn’t a proper director. But he developed his staging strictly from the music. That was adequate for him. Anyone who is asking for something new from a director could criticize him. But never a singer who worked with him.”

—  P.R. Jenkins