Help a Wagner newbie with Solti's Rheingold

[PerfectWagnerite]

So is the Neuhold okay? Reviews seem pretty positive.

It is okay, better than Haitink, Goodall and Boulez and worse than the others. The sets again suffers from serious miscasts. If you don't mind a shrill Sieglinde, flat Brunnhilde, and pretty lame sounding Siegmund and Siegfried you are not going to be disappointed much. The orchetra is very good if a bit smallish sounding and the sound is distant without much detail. But sometimes you can get this set for as little as $10 or $15 on ebay so you really can't complain much.

The Boulez can't be bad. It's Boulez.

The conducting and orchestral playing are actually excellent, the cast just stinks.

Incidentally I recently listened to Knappertsbusch's 1956 Bayreuth cycle which has the same cast (almost down to the last rank and file Valkyrie) as Keilberth's 1955 cycle. I must say the Kna is excellent with crystal clear mono sound every bit as good as Keilberth's early stereo. So if you are dying to hear the likes of Hotter, Varnay in their prime and find either the Keilberth too expensive or the Krauss 1953 too sonically lacking this is the cycle for you.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

Actually, one reason I've avoided vocal music in general is that I find many voices intolerable. Others seem much more tolerant of huge vibrato, harshness of tone, etc.

"Harshness of tone" doesn't sound like the type of thing too many front-rank opera singers are afflicted with. At least none that I know. Now, give Axl Rose an aria and it's different story.

Also, vocal music often seems unoriginal compared with instrumental music: composers I admire often seem compelled to conform to "operatic style" when writing opera, or "choral style" when writing for choir, forsaking much of what makes their symphonic or chamber music interesting and individual.

Whoa!! Stop the press! Wrong, wrong, wrong. All wrong.

Opera is every bit as "interesting and individual" as anything out there. As an admitted opera newbie it might behoove you to lay off snap judgments like this. It'll only set you back.

At no time in history have Mozart's major operas been relegated to the second ranks due to anything "unoriginal". They're major players in Mozart's output.

Ditto Prokofiev's operas, and Wagner's, Martinu's, R. Strauss's, Janacek's, Berlioz's, Britten's, Handel's, and on and on and on..............................................