Customer Reviews

Abu Hassan

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Written in 1810, this frothy little farce reflects the then-current fashion for "Turkish" themes. The overture is fizzingly brilliant, leading to a sequence of ten numbers, only three of them arias, including two for Abu Hassan's wife, Fatime. The plot involves the machinations of Abu Hassan to get himself out of debt, with the Caliph (one of the three speaking roles) finally awarding him a thousand gold pieces. Sawallisch conducts a brilliant performance, with Nicolai Gedda in the title role pointing his music lightly, with Edda Moser vibrantly as his wife, and with Kurt Moll superb as the grasping money lender, Omar.
This come with first rate sound, engineered in 1975 by an EMI-Electrola team.

This short (less than 48 minutes) and magnificent singspiel (a singsiel can roughly be defined as a german operetta) is one of the best of its kind. The performance on this CD is dazzling and all three soloists are superb. The sound (1975 recording) is very good, but there is no libretto. If you want to find good music of Weber who is one of the most important and influential German composers of the romantic era (actually he Mendelssohn was the first German romantic composer), you will probably want to get before or after you get this CD his masterpeace, Der Freischutz. A strong recommendation is Harnoncourt's on Teldec. END