Welitsch was the ideal Salome: a soprano with the bright, forward purity of voice (Strauss wanted Elisabeth Schumann to sing the role remember) to convince you that she really is 16 years old, and yet with a fearless intensity that can convey depraved obsession with horrifying directness. Even the imperfections of this 1944 radio recording serve only to increase the impact of her performance: the orchestra is muzzy and distorted (it improves later), but the voice is unnervingly close and realistic, especially in this digital remastering, and the diction is immaculate. It is surprising how often she sings quietly (the close balance helps here, of course), and she is at her most disturbing at those moments. Her murmured endearments to the severed head of Jokanaan are shockingly intimate, her dreadful assertion that ''the secret of love is stronger than the secret of death'' (dreadful because her obvious meaning—obvious in this performance, at least—is that her desire for Jokanaan is so great that it can be consummated with his blood-smeared head, and if you think I am wrong listen to the quality of Welitsch's voice after that consummation: post-orgasmic is the only word for it) turns the stomach. And yet it is all quite beautifully sung with not a single strained note or ungainly phrase it is one of the great vocal recordings, unsurpassed and I should have thought unsurpassable.
She was rather a sophisticated artist for the naive Tatiana and Agathe, you might think, but her line in both these numbers is very pure, her shading of words (the Eugene Onegin aria is sung in German) very subtle and she brings to both a beautifully tender pianissimo. The rapid vibrato to her tone lends urgency (as does her very fast tempo) to Aida's ''Ritonna vincitor''. Purity of line and brightness of tone also mark Tosca's ''Vissi d'arte'' and Musetta's waltz-song: there is nothing of the grande dame to the former and not a scrap of brassiness to the latter. Beautiful though these are, however, they are two-dimensional when set beside the Strauss, which is so real that you can almost see it (if you are not hiding your eyes, that is). The recordings, the patchy orchestral sound in the Strauss apart, are remarkably clean, the bright gleam of the voice quite untarnished.R1 '8803001'