Customer Reviews

Johann Strauss II: Wiener Blut (Vienna Blood)

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SOURCE: Studio recording made on may 21-22, 26-28 and 31, 1954 at Kingsway Hall, London. Producer Walter Legge. First issued on two Lps by Columbia.

SOUND: "Wiener Blut" was originally recorded in top-of-the-line mono. I am not familiar with the sound of this particular digital mastering, but it was issued at a time when EMI's sound engineers were not exactly earning cheers from discerning listeners. There appears to have been a subsequent remastering when Strauss' "Wiener Blut" and "Eine Nacht in Venedig" were issued together by EMI in a two-disk set. That remastering has won praise.

CAST: Grafin Gabriele, the Countess, wife of Graf Zedlau - Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (soprano); Baldwin, Graf Zedlau, a Count with a roving eye - Nicolai Gedda (tenor); Demoiselle Franziska Cagliari (Franzi), a dancer and Graf Zedlau's current mistress - Erika Köth (soprano) and Hannah Norbert (speaking role); Josef, Graf Zedlau's servant - Erich Kunz (baritone); Pepi Pleininger, a "mannequin" and the object of Josef's love - Emmy Loose (soprano); Prinz Ypsheim-Gindelbach, Prime Minister of Reuss-Schleiz-Greiz and Graf Zedlau's boss - Karl Dönch (baritone); Graf Bitowsky, host of the grand ball that takes place in Act II - Karel Stepanek (speaking role); Kagler, Franzi's father - Alois Pernerstorfer (speaking role).

CONDUCTOR: Otto Ackermann, with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus.

TEXT: "Wiener Blut"--literally "Viennese Blood" but perhaps more happily translated as "Viennese Spirit"--is a pastiche of a Strauss operetta created, with the permission of the composer, by Adolf Müller, the conductor of Vienna's Theater an der Wien. It was assembled out of Strauss' older and sometimes ignored works. The words were supplied by Viktor Léon and Léo Stein, the same pair who, a few years later, would provide Franz Lehar with the words of "The Merry Widow." The name of the operetta comes from one of Strauss' most popular earlier works, the "Wiener Blut Waltz."

"Wiener Blut" opened in a sumptuous and expensive production on October 26, 1899, five months after the death of Johann Strauss II. It died too, after just thirty performances, a flat failure. So calamitous was the fiasco that the producer, by then bankrupt, killed himself just two months after that. In 1905 the show was hauled out, dusted off, subjected to major revisions in music and libretto. This time it was a hit, achieving success despite the enormous competition offered by "The Merry Widow," the mega-hit show of that year and for decades to come.

On this recording, music and dialogue together add up to about seventy minutes. This is far too short for an evening's entertainment. (For comparison, the music in a Gilbert and Sullivan "comic opera" averages about eighty minutes, with the dialogue adding the better part of an hour.) I assume that the dialogue was cut absolutely to the bone and perhaps some of the music, too, in order to fit the show into the capacity of the original two Lp disks.

PLOT: A merest trifle. The show takes place during the glittering Congress of Vienna (November 1814 to June 1815). The date and location serves no other purpose than to provide the occasion for elaborate sets and spectacular costumes--a costly affair, no doubt regretted by the original producer during the short remainder of his life. The Count is the ambassador from a postage stamp-sized German principality to the great convention designed to restore Europe and make the world safe for aristocracy after the tumultuous years of Napoleon. Like Eisenstein in "Die Fledermaus," the Count seems genetically indisposed toward marital fidelity. He is more blatant about it, however, since he already has one mistress and his eye is roving after another. That other is, by the Law of Operettic Convention, the young woman who happens to be loved by his servant. The Count's superior, the elderly and conservative Prime Minister, turns up in Vienna and the plot then whirls through a series of encounters in which each of the three women manages to be mistaken for someone else while the Count dashes about, attempting to save face as well as his job while keeping the old Prime Minister happy. In the end, the marriage of the Count and Countess is restored to working order (sort of) and all ends happily (more or less.)

COMMENTARY: Beyond granting permission for his music to be used, Johann Strauss took no hand in the creation of this show. This is Strauss at second, third or even later hand. This leads to the peculiar effect that the show seems vaguely familiar even to one who has never heard or seen it before while at the same time offering a barrier to the working of Strauss' specific genius, which is so clearly evident in number after number throughout his sparkling "Fledermaus." The negative aspect should not be overemphasized, however, for if "Wiener Blut" is not vintage Strauss champagne, it is, nevertheless, still a tasty wine spritzer (with a touch of peach schnapps for flavor, of course.)

The cast of "Wiener Blut" is for all intents and purposes the Walter Legge Operetta Repertory Company. It may be found on a whole series of German language operettas issued by EMI in the 1950s up to about 1960. It is unlikely that any actual opera company or theater outside a major national festival would ever have been able to assemble a cast of such experience or stellar magnitude and it would be impossible today.

The conductor, Otto Ackerman, was the operetta go-to man in the 1950s and 60s. He knew his business and he even manages to get a distinct lilt out of the excellent but manifestly non-Austrian Philharmonia Orchestra.

Excellent cast, early digital remastering, well-known and obscure bits of Straussiana assembled by lesser talents into be a pastiche of an operetta by Johann Strauss II. "Wiener Blut" is lightweight, amusing, tuneful and not quite top-of-the-line. I think its worth four waltzing stars.

As the other reviewer tells us in detail, Winer blut was a pastiche of leftover Strauss tunes, plus some familiar ones, cobbled together by other hands in hipes at ariving at a charming new operetta. The musical content is a cut above Ein Nacht in Venedig, which puts it wll below Zigeunerbaron and miles behind Fledermaus. But the score is a plesant listen, and here we have the champagne cast of all time. In one year, 1954, the starry ensemble of Schwarzkopf, Gedda, and Kunz recorded three complete operettas.

Schwarkopf famously never san operetta on stage, but her great style and sophistication, closely followed by Gedda, offers the chief enjoyment here. Ackermann, as always, is expet without being effervescent or joyous. Being a fan of everyone here, I was happy to own Winer blut, but one could never claim that the work is first rate, or even second.