Wagner and More: Neil Howlett assesses a documentary volume devoted to Walter Widdop

Review of Michael Letchford, compiled and ed., Walter Widdop: the Great Yorkshire Tenor. A Chronology & A Selection of Reviews: 1923–1938, available from Michael Letchford, Goar Lodge, Smith’s Green, Takeley, CM22 6NS.

March 2014, Volume 8, Number 1, 86–7.

The literature on English Wagner singers has suffered from a severe lack of information on the career of Walter Widdop, without doubt the greatest and most important Heldentenor ever produced in this country: the only English tenor ever to have sung all the major Wagner roles at the highest level. Hitherto, information regarding his outstanding career could be gleaned only from his HMV recordings, but now the void has been aptly filled by Michael Letchford’s timely compilation. A late starter, at 31, like many a singer gifted – or burdened – with a dramatic voice, he started at the top (Radamès!) and rapidly developed into a worthy colleague of singers of the calibre of Frida Leider, Kirsten Flagstad, Göta Ljungberg and Eva Turner.