J. Strauss Ii: Die Fledermaus

J. Strauss (Artist), Karajan (Artist), Schwarzkopf (Artist), Gedda (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (November 17, 2009)
• Number of Discs: 3
• Label: EMI Classics
• ASIN: B002N4DZ4E
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #14,137 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delightful, Silly, and Elegent, September 5, 2010

By 

Nate Charlton (Santa Rosa, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: J. Strauss Ii: Die Fledermaus (Audio CD)

While I feel that the Karajan "splendor-ific" approach can misfire badly (Wagner's "Ring Cycle" being the prime example), Herr von Karajan always hit Johann Strauss right on the head. The beauty of the score shines above all else in this 1955 studio production of Strauss's most famous operetta produced under legendary EMI producer Walter Legge.

The Music:

Beautiful, light, silly, and eloquent at the same time. The main themes are introduced in the Ouvetüre, much like a modern musical, and similiar to Wagner's compositional style, never fully played (only hinted at) until much later in the work. The waltz theme and the champagne theme are the most played, and are possibly the best pieces written by Strauss (his wienerwalzeren notwithstanding).

While Karajan focuses more on the sound of the music than how it enhances the drama, the beauty and elegance of the score raise this steamy and somewhat chaotic work to a grand scale.

The libretto is absolutely hilarious, with wonderful songs, excellent dialogue, and of course full of innuendoes and jibes at political leaders (Orlofsky, Falke, Blind, and Frosch are either crazy, corrupt or drunk throughout the duration of the play).

The players:

I have a few other recordings of this opera, (highlights) from Kleiber, Karajan's 1960 Vienna studio recording, Domingo's 1986 studio recording, and although each of them have their fantastic players, none of them can come close to matching the cast here (with the possible exception of Lucia Popp as Adele for Kleiber). The cast here is able to carry out the singing and dialogue with relative ease, bringing the drama full circle. Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (Legge's wife) is beautiful and rich as ever; Rita Streich is light and lovely as the aspiring actress Adele; Nicolai Gedda is light, but appropriate and effective as Eisenstein, better than a deeper baritonal voice; Helmut Krebs sings beautifully (no wonder Rosalinde fell for him) and is an absolute joy as a "dashing" Alfred; Rudolf Christ plays Orlofsky straight, but his deep tenor voice makes him wonderful to listen to, and more believable (a mezzo would work on stage, not so much in a studio recording. The same goes for Cherubino and other trouser roles); Majkut is funny, albeit somewhat annoying, as the incompetent Dr. Blind. Kunz and Dönch do well in their roles, with the latter sounding positively drunk in Act III. Speaking of drunk, Franz Böheim gives the best performance as the drunken prison guard, but manages to pull off his lines with extreme conviction.

The sound:

Wow. Wow! EMI did a fabulous job restoring the original tracks bringing out the beauty and charm without stifling the actual sound (Legge's 1959 "Don Giovanni" was not as lucky). Being made in 1955, magnetic tape recording had been perfected (for the most part) and multitrack recording making stereophonic sound only a hop, skip, and a jump away.

Although in mono, this was clearly made with a staging effect in mind (similar to how Culshaw and his Decca successors did) with multitrack tapes. You hear Alfred "offstage" and "entering" and almost believe that the characters are on different sides of the stage due to the wonderful balance. The chorus is a bit muffled, albeit for mixing reasons, but still clearly heard. No, there staging effects for the ball in Act II, in fact you'd rarely know your there since little ambience is given other than the chorus and occasional laughing. Again, it was John Culshaw who truly introduced staging effects into studio recordings, and the technological boundaries of mixing them in would not be easily crossed in mono.

The 2009 EMI Opera series release:

I like the design of the cases and artwork, being classy but appropriate, and much better than the "Great Recordings of the Century" covers. I would like to have a libretto and synopsis in hand though, but I understand the cost of producing them can be expensive. I like the idea of data CDs containing PDF files of the information though as most releases don't even do that. If you do not have a computer, I'm dreadfully sorry, and I don't believe they work in a DVD player. Note: After originally writing this review, I obtained Solti's "Rigoletto" which contains a libretto on one of the regular CDs, and not its own. I also understand that several Decca and RCA releases do this, so why did EMI have to make the CDs separate? It certainly would have been nice.

Overall, this recording is wonderful, truly wonderful. The sublime nature of the music, vocals, not to mention the sound make this truly a captivating and unrivaled recording. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in taking their first leaps into opera, or even you are already familiar with opera, to just add a work genius into your catalogue.