And...I laughed!

"Wunderlich is like puppies or something: so universally liked that it's just incredibly boring to say anything about him, because it's just going to amount to 'yeah, me too.'"

Maury D'Annato, once again, writes something that makes me laugh. Or, at the very least, allow a smirk to crack my dour, granite-like visage.

Here, if you're so inclined, is the whole post - with a ribald coda to the above statement which I did not feel was wholly appropriate for inclusion. Really quite funny, though.

As to Wunderlich, as much as I think he was a swell tenor, he cannot force me to abandon Peter Schreier. I feel that Schreier, in addition to being the vocal heir to the lyric tenor line of Wunderlich, is far more intellectual and intelligent in his various readings. Had Wunderlich not taken his terminal tumble, I still cannot see him turning a Loge or Mime like Schreier did for Janowski. Nor do I think that Wunderlich did as well in Beethoven's 9th as Schreier did for Von Karajan - of all people. In any event, Fritz did hand in a gorgeous Salzburg Bruckner Te Deum which is probably the single best recording of that score ever. That doesn't save him, though.