Customer Reviews

Strauss: Die Frau Ohne Schatten

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This is a glorious performance of Die Frau Ohne Schatten. The classic version before Solti's 1991 version. Everyone is in peak form. But the star of this production is the Empress of Leonie Rysanek in her absolute prime - her voice glorious and creamy. She appeared in the 1964 Karajan set, the 1977 Bohm set and the 1974 Bohm set. But this is her best recorded Empress. All this is superb Decca stereo!!! Hongen proves that she was the reigning mezzo at the Vienna State Opera before Christa Ludwig. This has to be Christel Goltz's best record!! All her other recordings are either in mono sound or feature her at less than her best. Here, in superb stereo, you hear why she was a top leading dramatic soprano in the 1950s. Paul Schoffler is superb as Barak - the equal of Walter Berry. The Emperor is great too.

This is my favorite opera, and I have heard most of the recordings. This one is the best by far. Not only are the singers wonderful, as the other reviews say, but their diction is exceptionally clear, allowing the drama and interaction to come through perfectly. The fact that it is not complete bothers me a little, but the cuts are nowhere near as bad as on Boehm's live Vienna recording on DG (i.e. the Dyer's wife parts that he always cut in live performance are mostly here, although he does cut that solo for the nurse in Act 3, which is very good--anyway, I think he cut the dyer's wife's stuff in live performance because the role was so taxing, not because he really thought it should be cut...so it's all here in this one). Christel Goltz's Dyer's wife is beautifully vivid here, so it is lucky that those cuts were not made. Rysanek is her usual amazing self. This recording is worth hundreds of stars...it's in a league of its own.

In the last two months of 1955, the Wiener Staatsoper audience was treated to a then Straussian rarity that a group of musicians began championing around the world to great acclaim. It was through this gifted bunch of singers and this great conductor that Die Frau Ohne Schatten became a mainstay in opera houses around the world. This conductor, Karl Böhm, was a friend of the composer and thought this massive score to be one of the composer's greatest gifts to mankind. He was right. The opera, perhaps one of the most complex, polyphonic scores penned by Strauss' hand, is extremely challenging and perhaps impossible to stage without the presence of great personalities to carry off the glorious music. One could say that Die Frau Ohne Schatten was Strauss' Don Carlo, not only requiring a great mind to birth the music onstage, but also demanding a quintet of great voices to assume the characters onstage.

Fortunately, for the opera lover, Strauss' Frau has been served well on records. Böhm's dedication to the score is audible in this recording and evidences a clarity, an orchestral texture, and a rhythmic drive that makes Frau live through sound alone. His cast is exemplary. For more than three decades, Leonie Rysanek was everyone's ideal empress. Not only did she easily command the role's high tessitura, but she also brought a humanity that made the empress a more immediate and loving character. It was a not a diaphanous voice like Cheryl Studer's was, but when she was on top of her game as she was here, she could arrest the audience's attention with the kind of blazing intensity she usually invests in every role she sings.

Hans Hopf is the emperor. He was one of the great Heldentenors of the last century, but he was also not very imaginative. Böhm would need James King many years later to give a three dimensional take on this character, whose part may be short but in the hands of a great interpreter can become one of the most touching and beautiful characters in the opera. Elisabeth Höngen, one of Germany's greatest mezzos, sings the treacherous role of the Amme in this recording. The Amme is perhaps the most difficult character to sing due to her complex qualities and a vocal line that takes the instrument from the depths of the voice to a high B. Kudos to her for her fine delineation of character and her highly capable assumption of this great mezzo role. Paul Schöffler, another great singer from that era, is Barak. Schöffler was a great Hans Sachs and a Wotan during his day, and he was a sensitive singer who knew exactly how to phrase a line of German music. As the dyer, no one sings the part more sensitively. Christel Goltz is the Dyer's Wife. Madame Goltz was one of the great dramatic sopranos of her day, underrated due to the presence of great international stars who were chosen to take the limelight. She is here finally given the attention that is due to her talent, and what a Färberin she is! No one, not even Nilsson, Marton, Behrens, Vinzing, or Ludwig, could come close to the kind of abandon that she puts on display here. The only two singers I can think of excelling in the Dyer's Wife in this respect are Inge Borkh and Gwyneth Jones.

In this recording, you are able to hear the grand introduction of Frau ohne Schatten to the world of music. And in all respects is it a great performance. Highly recommended.

This is easily the finest recording of this crippled masterpiece, the closest thing to a definitive Frau. Not only are the singers at the top of their form (e.g., the sublime Rysanek with the most thrilling high note in all of opera), and not only does this have the finest Strauss conductor of the 20th Century, but this is the only absolutely uncut performance I've found.

This is THE must-have recording of this work.

(Around 1970, I met both Maestro Bohm and Empress Rysanek after a performance of this work at the Met in NY. It was one of the great moments of my life. I asked him (with the help of a translator) if he ever had played Skat (gambling card game) with Richard Strauss. His response (from the translator): "No, I would have lost too much money." It was a night to remember.)

Die Frau Ohne Schatten is clearly one of the greatest operas ever written. This set is incredible. Just buy it!!

In his autobiograpy A MINGLED CHIME, Sir Thomas Beecham cited "the old maxim that metaphysics and the theater, especially the lyric theater, hardly ever go comfortably hand in hand, as Strauss...discovered in the case of his WOMAN WITHOUT A SHADOW." Now, taken as a rule, this proposition "puts paid" to almost all of Wagner, and - for all his earthiness - a good chunk of Verdi. Still, Sir Tommy was not wrong - at least, in gauging what an operatic audience of his time could digest. Not to mention the staggering scenic, orchestral and vocal challenges posed by DIE FRAU OHNE SCHATTEN. So we are not talking about another night of TOSCA - or even ROSENKAVALIER. But to the generations following the popularity of J.R. Tolkien, dungeons-and-dragons, Avitar and all sorts of outer space epics, the metaphysics of DIE FRAU OHNE SCHATTEN could hardly constitute the skull-cracking conundrum it may have been to the average, early-to-mid 20th century opera-goer.

In spite of its densely symphonic nature, and given the fabled "heaviness" and "tortuous mental processes" of Hugo von Hofmannthal's libretto, DIE FRAU is dominated by a BEL CANTO melos. And throughout its span, the music of DIE FRAU brings to life, and deeply humanizes, the characters and the metaphysics of this "abstract" work...In which an ethereal Empress, married to the human Emperor of an "Eastern Kingdon", must acquire a shadow, or he will turn to stone - and which ends, amid chasms and waterfalls, with an off-stage chorus of unborn children (seriously).

("Shadow" = the ability to bear children, and human-ness - shades of Jung, even if von Hofmannthal's "Shadow" is human-ness "in general", and Jung's is the unacknowledged "underside" which needs to be integrated with the rest of the "self"...But never mind, just read the libretto.)

In light of all this, it should go without saying that 'FROSCH' - Strauss's own pet name for this work - is a "festival" piece, best not even attempted unless the conductor, singers and orchestra are thoroughly, and I mean THOROUGHLY steeped in the Straussian idiom, and unless the scenic requirements - already hinted at - can be reasonably met. Otherwise, time-wasting silliness may ensue...A recent Salzburg production of 'FROSCH' skates around the scenic challenges by placing the story within the Sofiensaal - shades of the Solti/Culshaw RING (?) - as the 1955 Decca cast, with 'mikes' and headphones, is making this recording (!). Never mind that it was actually recorded in the Musikvereinsaal, and that Decca would not utilize the Sofiensaal until the following year. And never mind the fine "Regie" hash made of the work's inner content in giving it a quasi-ARIADNE-Prologue, story-within-a-story "frame" that it will not bear.

This 1955 Decca 'FROSCH' is (IMHO) one of the two greatest "authorized" recordings of the work, in which its musical challenges - conducting, vocal, and orchestral - are supremely met. The other is, of course, the live 1977 DG set - also featuring Leonie Rysanek as the Empress, and also with Karl Bohm conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. Both recordings reached the market either inadvertantly or reluctantly, and both were connected to Vienna Opera productions of 'FROSCH.'

On November 5, 1955, the newly restored Vienna Opera opened with Karl Bohm conducting FIDELIO, and his production of 'FROSCH' quickly followed. This performance was preserved on tape by Austrian Radio, and only recently were we blessed with its "authorized" release by Orfeo, in excellent mono sound. It IS a great performance, and must have been a true revelation to those present. But the orchestra sounds undersized, and because of this - for all Bohm's expertise - the multi-layered textures of Strauss's finely calibrated score, suffer. Bohm's live 1955 tempi are also rather more urgent, and this can be a good thing. But in the Decca version, his more leisurely tempi make for greater overall lyricism - a lack of which can be fatal in 'FROSCH'.

In any case, this new production of 'FROSCH' was an unexpected success with the demanding Viennese public. And with no rehearsal time necessary, Bohm and his lead singers ardently petitioned Decca to record it. Decca - understandably reluctant to back such a potentially expensive, commercially problematic work - only consented when Bohm and his 'leads' put up their fees and agreed to record it (in early stereo, unbeknownst to the singers !) - in a series of after-hours "long takes", from November 29 through December 10, 1955. Nor did their altruism end, there...Vienna was undergoing an early winter cold-snap, and Decca declined to pay for heat in the Musikvereinssaal; some of the singers recorded their parts in heavy overcoats. In 1956 this recording was published as a 5-LP set - in mono only. Still, it was a momentous release and, for several years, "the only game in town" for Straussians who could not get to an at-least-adequate live performance of 'FROSCH'. (A library mono copy was my first exposure to this 'FROSCH'. And along with some earlier critics, I found the sonic "picture" lacking a necessary depth, warmth and sensuality. This was the fault of Decca's harsh-sounding mono 'mix' - NOT of Bohm or the Vienna Philharmonic - because the stereo 'mix' lacks nothing in essential "sensuality" or sonic impact.)

For the next 20 years, the only other major, "authorized" release of 'FROSCH' was the live Keilberth/Munich performance of November 21, 1963. True, it was the work's premiere stereo release, and in it Keilberth extracts more sensuality from his orchestra than Bohm often did in 'FROSCH'; it also preserves the excellent Barak of Dietrich Fischer-Diskau. But Keilberth's cuts are even more swingeing than usual for a live 'FROSCH'; and there is at least one nasty compromise with the composer's intention, in Act III...The temple maidens, who exhort the Empress to go meet her fate (as she sets out toward the steadily ossifying Emperor) are omitted altogether. That is, the passage itself is not cut, but the voices ARE...Was there a shortage of sopranos in Munich, that night? And this was the long-delayed official, post-war, gala re-opening of the Munich Opera !!! So, compared to other Strauss opera releases in the first half of the 1960s - Solti's SALOME, Karajan's ROSENKAVALIER film, Leinsdorf's ARIADNE - this was something of a disappointment.

The stereo release of Bohm's 1955 was delayed until 1968 (in the UK and Europe, by Decca) and 1970 (in the US, by London-Richmond). Given that the Westrex stereo vinyl cutter was introduced as early as 1958, the delay was unfortunate...Had these stereo records been on the market during that Golden Age of Stereo, 'FROSCH' might have enjoyed an even greater success in the wake of the work's 1959 American premiere - not to mention Bohm's legendary 1960s MET performances, when 'FROSCH' became truly popular for the first time. In any case, the sonic "bloom" of Decca's vivid, early stereo is a pleasure to the ears - even if the 1991 transfer is SLIGHTLY high-end-bright. (A 24-bit "Decca Originals" transfer is LONG overdue.)

Of course, there are several live Bohm 'FROSCH's, among them : Vienna 1953 (a 'concert' broadcast so heavily cut that the whole performance fits onto two, not three, MELODRAM CDs - even if, at least, it preserves the Empress of Eleanor Steber); the legendary 1966 MET production; the MET follow-up from 1969; and Salzburg 1974. But the '53 is taken from badly worn acetates and barely listenable; the MET performances are still legally "under wraps" (although there is some hope, with the new SONY/MET series, so we shall see); and a certain label's "unauthorized" release of the '74 Salzburg 'FROSCH' was - as many have noted - incorrectly pitched. There is also an excellent live 1954 Munich 'FROSCH', on WALHALL, with Leonie Rysanek as the Empress and Rudolf Kempe conducting; there are cuts, but the sound quality - admittedly typical, 50s-radio-mono - is more than listenable.

Meanwhile, the live 1977 DG 'FROSCH' is an 'edit' of two live Vienna Opera performances from October 23 & 27, 1977, approved by Karl Bohm shortly before his death in 1981. At this time of writing (i.e., until we get an "authorized" release of the '66 MET broadcast), it remains as Bohm's most viable live 'FROSCH'. This is, admittedly, a more 'experiential' reading than the '55, and offers stunning performances by Birgit Nilsson as the Dyer's Wife and James King as the Emperor - not to mention Bohm's increased understanding of how to put across the whole drama, which includes cutting (or at least 'finessing') occasional passages where Strauss's lyric invention sags a bit...

These include 'patches' near the beginning and end of Act II - as the drama's unfolding misery, "Chez Barak", plays itself out : the SYMPHONIA DOMESTICA, turned on its head. (Indeed, the atmosphere of MISERABILAE DOMESTICA is SO very rife, that one almost expects an Eastern Kingdom "Dr. Phil" to show up.) For better or for worse, Strauss was really the first major operatic composer to put this kind of dysfunctionalism on the stage : from the would-be grandeur and quasi-incestuous dynamics of the Houses of Herod and Agamemnon in SALOME and ELEKTRA, respectively; to all that misery Chez Barak in 'FROSCH'; to the even more 'common' problems of INTERMEZZO; and on to the family 'issues' of HELENA & ARABELLA.

But the most conspicuous 'dry patch' in 'FROSCH' is during the prolonged 'exultation' of the four principle characters in the Finale, who must now out-Fidelio FIDELIO - even if straightforward, Beethovenian exultation was NOT Strauss's forte. In spite of what Norman del Mar and others have written about 'FROSCH,' Strauss DID capture the exultation leading up to this moment - and just beyond it, but he could not sustain his best invention though ALL of it. Subsequently, there are some structurally unavoidable, almost mechanical 'bars' in which the Motivs run up and down - reminiscient of Delius in his more tedious, 'semi-quaver'-driven patches - as the passage builds toward the "Petrification" Motiv which now ends in an unexpected, affirmative C major chord (disc 3, track 14, 2:10 to 3:15 in the 1955 Decca; disc 3, track 11, 2:00 to 3:00 in the 1977 DG). At this point, Strauss recovers his 'game' in time for both the final crescendo and a beautifully apposite, soft-landing of an ending - not a bombastic one.

Nevertheless, the Decca 1955 'FROSCH' marks one of the great musical voyages of discovery in its time - much as the Solti RING would be, during the following decade - and has a freshness unmatched by any other recorded 'FROSCH'. It is also more note-perfect, with fewer cuts, and Leonie Rysanek is in fresher voice as the Empress. The Vienna Philharmonic - still free of the Post-Jet, Post-Karajan "International Sound" - also exhibits more of its venerable, Old World Sound as it unfolds Strauss's orchestral carpet of gems...In Act I, compare the 1955 vs. 1977 vision of riches, dangled before the Dyer's Wife; also compare the two versions of the glass harmonica sound in Act III, at the moment the Empress receives her shadow...One feels THIS is the sound which Strauss had in mind, as he composed 'FROSCH'. In common with Karajan's 1951 Bayreuth MEISTERSINGER, the atmosphere of "recovery" in this 1955 recording is almost palpable...Here was this stupendous, neglected work of Richard Strauss, being selflessly introduced to a wide, commercial public for the first time (in the brand-new format of stereo, yet), from a war-ravaged City which - having just been liberated from the Allied Occupational forces - was joyously anticipating a general peace and prosperity unknown for two generations. In 1955 Bohm and his cast were, indeed, going "where no man has gone before."

As did Strauss and von Hofmannsthal in 1919 - risking hostility and misunderstanding, in those hard-reality, post-war days, by daring to put on the stage such a massively demanding, phantasmagorical tale about the tussle between love and indifference; sacrifice and selfishness; the natural and the supernatural. If 'FROSCH' no longer seems "beyond us", this is due, in no small part, to Karl Bohm and his 1955 Decca cast - who selflessly built a bridge to our living rooms, across that waterfall-studded chasm.