Customer Reviews

Strauss: Der Zigeunerbaron

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If you are only getting one Gypsy Baron, this is the only recording worth considering for three overriding reasons.

1) Musically it is clearly the best overall. There are no spots where the singing and conducting isn't AT LEAST as good as that of the older, "classic", (i.e. EMI) recordings.

2) Aside from small textual changes that return the work to its original form (ie. opening chorus sung by only men) musical numbers and verses normally cut are mercifully restored. Especially, Mirabelle's aria (that should follow Czupan's "Pig Polka"). I could never understand cutting this number...one of the cleverest Strauss ever wrote. The fortissimo drum strokes at the description of the cannons booming all around her are hilarious and brilliant at once and many aspects of rhythm and orchestration anticipate similar works of twentieth century such as Weill's. In fact, it's so rarely performed, the first time I ever HEARD the number was ten or so years ago when the Ohio Light Opera at Wooster last did it.

3) Thanks to Harnoncourt's research close to an hour of music, thought lost, was found and restored in this recording. This especially adds much needed dramatic structure to what must seem, to most, a oddly brief third act...which in most recordings amounts to little more than "Act II, Finale II"!

The recording's extensive liner notes are worth careful reading as they relate the tragic fate of the music of Gypsy Baron. Briefly put, Strauss wanted to prove that he could do everything himself without relying on Richard Genee to help with orchestration, finishing touches and the assembling of a definitive vocal and orchestral score. The result was that Strauss did the two former but not do the latter and the work was subsequently cut-up, revised, chopped-up and reshuffled...etc etc. to a point where much of the music got lost. (Supposedly, a healthy amount of remaining music lost when the publishing house in which it was stored was destroyed during a WWII bombing raid!) Regardless, Harnoncourt goes a long way in restoring much of what many feel (including me) is Strauss's crowning masterpiece!

(A final comment: only one other recording, that I know of, includes the Mirabelle aria mentioned earlier (it's one of the earlier EMI's)...but the performance is pretty mediocre. The singer projects nothing of the emotion and character and the drum strokes would hardly rate as mezzo-forte.)