Deutsche Oper Berlin: 1961-1967
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Fidelio, Op.72b [124.00]
Christa Ludwig (mezzo: Leonora), James King (tenor: Florestan), Walter Berry
(baritone: Pizarro), Josef Greindl (bass: Rocco), Lisa Otto (soprano: Marzelline),
Martin Vantin (tenor: Jacquino), William Dooley (baritone: Minister), Barry
McDaniel (baritone: 1st prisoner), Manfred Röhrl (tenor: 2nd
prisoner), Artur Rother (conductor)
rec. Deutsche Oper Berlin, 1963
Giuseppe VERDI (1813-1901)
Don Carlos (1867-8) [155.00]
James King (tenor: Carlos), Pilar Lorengar (soprano: Elisabeth), Josef Greindl
(bass: Philip), Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (baritone: Posa), Patricia Johnson
(mezzo: Eboli), Martti Talvela (bass: Inquisitor), Ivan Sardi (bass: Monk),
Barbara Vogel (soprano: Tebaldo), Günther Treptow (tenor: Lerma), Lisa Otto
(soprano: Voice from Heaven), Wolfgang Sawallisch (conductor)
rec. Deutsche Oper Berlin, 1965
Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART (1756-1791)
Don Giovanni, K527 [176.00, 2 DVDs]
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (baritone: Giovanni), Elisabeth Grümmer (soprano:
Anna), Pilar Lorengar (soprano: Elvira), Walter Berry (bass: Leporello), Donald
Grobe (tenor: Ottavio), Josef Greindl (bass: Commendatore), Ivan Sardi (bass:
Masetto), Erika Köth (soprano: Zerlina), Ferenc Fricsay (conductor)
rec. Deutsche Oper Berlin, 24 September 1961
Giuseppe VERDI (1813-1901)
Otello (1887) [150.00]
Hans Beirer (tenor: Otello), Renata Tebaldi (soprano: Desdemona), William
Dooley (baritone: Iago), Mario Ferrara (tenor: Cassio), Karl-Ernst Mercker
(Rodrigo), Sieglinde Wagner (mezzo: Emilia), Ivan Sardi (bass: Lodovico),
Pecca Salomaa (bass: Montano), Hans-Dietrich Pohl (baritone: Herald), Giuseppe
Patanè (conductor)
rec. Deutsche Oper Berlin, 1962
Domenico CIMAROSA (1749-1801)
Il matrimonio segreto (1792) [123.00]
Erika Köth (soprano: Carolina), Lisa Otto (soprano: Elisetta), Donald Grobe
(tenor: Paolino), Josef Greindl (bass: Geronimo), Patricia Johnson (mezzo:
Fidalma), Barry McDaniel (baritone: Count), Lorin Maazel (conductor)
rec. Deutsche Oper Berlin, 1967
ARTHAUS MUSIK 107522 [6 DVDs, timings as above]
If only British television had been as pro-active as German television in
the 1960s, we might have had video recordings of such productions as the complete
Callas and Gobbi Tosca instead of the miserable Act Two that we do
have, even if only in black-and-white and mono sound. As it is one can only
commend the German television companies for making the recordings we have
here; they may be mono (in both senses of the word) but both sound and picture
are exceptionally fine for the era, well re-mastered, and they enshrine some
memorable performances. Having said that, all of them are given at least partially,
but more of that later, in German; and, for all but one of the operas here,
that means in German translation. As such they may have limited appeal, but
they can claim the attention of more than just German-speaking listeners.
All have previously been available as single issues, but they are now collected
as a sample of the work of the Deutsche Opera during the 1960s. However, as
in all such collections, some parts are better than others, and potential
purchasers may elect to pick and choose.
Fidelio
The one work here which is given throughout in the original language is Fidelio,
and it is perhaps unfortunate that this is the only recording which has a
rival in the DVD catalogues with the same company and in a filmed adaptation
of the same production by Gustav Rudolf Sellner – but made in colour in 1970.
That DVD also features the same Florestan, Rocco and the two Prisoners. There
are a considerable number of differences in detail, although the casting is
also a matter of swings and roundabouts. In the earlier performance James
King is in fresher voice, and looks more convincingly half-starved, but in
the later performance he has added many subtle points of detail to his interpretation.
Gwyneth Jones in the later version is very good (she was at the height of
her form at this period), but Christa Ludwig in this black-and-white production
is even better, singing and acting as if possessed and never fazed by the
difficulties of Beethoven’s writing. Gustav Neidlinger in 1970 is more obviously
villainous than Walter Berry in 1963, but the latter has a more beautiful
voice and conveys many hints of a more rounded character with hidden character
flaws (despite eye make-up that would have done credit to Dusty Springfield).
William Dooley is a baritone rather than the more usual bass (Martti Talvela
took the part in 1970) but it is surely dramatically right that the minister,
a friend of Florestan and Leonora, should sound younger rather than older,
and he portrays a properly civilised character. Martin Vantin, generally a
comprimario tenor consigned to character parts, displays a nicely Mozartian
line as the hapless Jacquino; but Lisa Otto seems to have been having an off
day at the time of this recording. She is surprisingly ungainly in her faster
semi-coloratura passages, and she sounds distinctly uneasy at the
beginning of the great quartet, which disturbs the atmosphere at that point,
although Josef Greindl’s sour tones as Rocco don’t help.
It is a pity that Greindl could not have been replaced as Rocco in 1970 as
well. He had a major career in Germany for many years, but his voice never
sounded pleasant; it had a hard ebony tone which suited villainous roles such
as Hagen, but even then his top notes were often strained and his tuning could
often be suspect as well. He also carried on singing for far too long, and
the faults that were evident even in his early performances got worse with
time. He appears in all the productions in this box with the exception of
the Otello, and his contributions are invariably a trial; he also
over-acts in a decidedly hammy fashion which accords badly with the more restrained
approach of the other members of the cast. He is better as Rocco in 1970 with
a firmer directorial hand and closer control of camera angles.
Artur Rother conducts a vigorous and exciting performance, not without expression,
and clearly understands well how the music should go. He is rather let down
by some unsteady horn playing in Leonora’s aria, but the oboist – the symbol
of Florestan’s deliverance – deserves praise for his beautifully rounded inflections
both in Florestan’s aria and in the finale. The balance between singers and
orchestra is very good, much better than in 1970 where Karl Böhm’s conducting
also sounds decidedly lacklustre by the side of Rother’s. The performance
here was apparently recorded especially for television. There are a couple
of rather obvious edits, and no applause at the end of Acts, although there
is plenty of coughing from an invisible audience, especially during the opening
of Act Two.
Don Carlos
There cannot really be an enormous amount of objection to performing Don
Carlos in German – it was after all based on a Schiller play – and the
German translation we are given here is considerably better than the workaday
Italian translation of Verdi’s original French text with which we are usually
afflicted. Some of the principal singers, not all of whom are native German
speakers, handle the words better than others. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau is
obviously the best, although there are moments when he seems to forget he
is singing Verdi and indulges himself in some Sprechstimme passages.
Greindl, a purely villainous Philip grimacing with overdone menace, is the
worst, and his lip-sync (the performance was clearly pre-recorded for television,
with the singers miming to their own soundtrack) is sometimes laughably inaccurate.
In his big aria he lacks the resonant and solid high notes that are essential
for this role, and in the following scene with the Grand Inquisitor he is
comprehensively outsung by Martti Talvela. James King is excellent in the
title role, although his miming is also sometimes unconvincing; he has a ringing
tenor which he uses to the best effect and his characterisation is good too.
Patricia Johnson, some squally top notes aside, is a characterful Eboli. Pilar
Lorengar has the most authentic Verdian line of any of the principals, and
her performance of her last Act aria is the best single section of the whole.
It is interesting to hear Günther Treptow, once a celebrated heldentenor,
in the extremely small part of Lerma; he makes the most noise of anyone on
stage.
The score is given in Verdi’s later four-act version, but is then subjected
to even further cuts – we lose not only the whole of the First Act but chunks
out of the others too. Over an hour of music goes missing from the original
score, although we are rightly given the sometimes-omitted Insurrection Scene
which follows the death of Posa. As a recording of Don Carlos for
a video collection, this could therefore hardly be a first choice; and the
rather dour sets, not helped by being seen in monochrome, are not a patch
on those of similar vintage to be seen on the Covent Garden DVD of the old
Visconti production. On the other hand we are not made to suffer any directorial
‘glosses’ and ‘re-interpretations’, which some may count a blessing; and the
acting of most of the principals is natural and believable – Fischer-Dieskau
is a properly impassioned Posa, making his political ideals clearly visible
through his almost fanatically possessed eyes (which the cameras let us see
clearly). There is one other major reservation, however. At the very end the
appearance of Charles V is cut (together with the music that accompanies it),
so that the opera ends with Carlos being taken into the custody of the Grand
Inquisitor, presumably for execution. This may be closer to historical accuracy,
and to Schiller’s frequently wildly inaccurate version of history which he
gave us in his original play; but it is not the conclusion that Verdi wrote,
and maintained throughout his series of revisions of the score. Wolfgang Sawallisch
conducts what is left of the score with vigour and energy, although the chorus
are sometimes a bit rough and are far too hearty to be convincing as monks
at the beginning of this truncated version.
Don Giovanni
To perform Don Giovanni in German can also be defended. Mozart was
after all a German-speaking composer writing for a German audience, and the
work was being given performances in Mainz and Hamburg in German translation
within two years of its Prague première - that is, during Mozart’s own lifetime.
This recording for television was made, oddly enough, not at an actual performance
but during the dress rehearsal – which must have been hard on the singers,
unable to conserve their voices by ‘marking’ - that is, singing with less
than full voice - during any particularly strenuous or difficult passages.
However the dress rehearsal was clearly given in front of a pretty large audience,
who annoyingly not only start clapping before arias have finished but also
interrupt the Catalogue Aria with premature applause.
My Dover edition of the full score is a reprint of a scholarly German edition
published originally in 1941 (of all years!) which has in fact the German
text printed above the original Italian, but it is clear from his
page turns during the overture that Ferenc Fricsay is employing a different
edition, and indeed the German translation differs in a number of not very
significant places. Fricsay had a reputation as the conductor who inaugurated
‘period’ practice in Mozart, adopting generally faster tempos than had hitherto
been the custom and rounding out the ends of recitative phrases with appogiature.
Here, while using the traditional large forces employed at the time, his speeds
are indeed brisk, and his Presto for the Champagne aria
leaves Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau gasping to keep up; but by and large the singers
cope well with what must at the time have been unexpectedly rapid passages.
The production by Carl Ebert is set in an uncomfortable mix of somewhat abstract
sets - which probably looked much better in colour - and traditional period
costumes which sometimes seem to get in the singers’ way and certainly limit
their manoeuvrability on stage. Of these singers, Donald Grobe is probably
the nearest in style to what we would nowadays recognise as a Mozartian norm,
with Pilar Lorengar running him a close second. Elisabeth Grümmer (who had
previously appeared in the 1954 film version conducted by Furtwängler) and
Erika Köth are both chirpily bright without showing much expression; possibly
they felt more hampered by Fricsay’s speeds. Fischer-Dieskau and Walter Berry,
sounding uncannily alike - their exchange of costumes in the Second Act is
uncommonly convincing - clearly bounce off each other in the recitatives and
relish the German text. Fischer-Dieskau indeed presents a very charming villain,
all smiles and false bonhomie; and he cuts a very persuasive figure on stage.
Ivan Sardi is a rather dour Masetto; and Josef Greindl is fortunately restricted
here to a limited number of appearances at the beginning and the end, when
he casts a suitably funereal gloom over the proceedings although his high
notes are strained rather than menacing.
The text which Fricsay employs is the usual conflation of Mozart’s Prague
and Vienna versions of the scores, with both tenor arias and Donna Elvira’s
final aria included but with the short duet between Zerlina and Leporello
omitted. There are also two small cuts, of Donna Elvira’s recitative after
the Catalogue aria and Don Ottavio’s recitative after Anna’s Non
mi dir, well if cautiously sung by Grümmer. But these are hardly serious
matters, and not to be compared with Furtwängler’s omission of Don Ottavio’s
first aria in his 1954 film although he apparently included it in his original
Salzburg staging. More questionable is the decision taken to banish the Commendatore’s
lines in the graveyard scene to an offstage voice. Although Mozart did not
specify this in his score, it has long been a tradition to have the accompaniment
to these lines played by an offstage band; but it was never possibly Mozart’s
intention to have the singer placed at such a disadvantage, which removes
any sense of menace to the doom-laden words he utters. As the statue approaches
during the final scene, Fricsay adds a bass drum - I think, although it might
be timpani - and wind machine to Mozart’s score, which can perhaps be justified
on dramatic grounds although Don Giovanni’s descent into Hell is extremely
feebly staged; it is not at all clear what is actually meant to be happening
here.
Otello
Although a case can be made for performing Don Carlos and Don
Giovanni in German translation, it is hard to defend what we are given
here in the form of a bi-lingual Otello. Apparently the Deutsche
Opera were already performing the opera in German when they seized the chance
to engage the justly celebrated Renata Tebaldi for the role of Desdemona.
She understandably balked at the idea of singing one of her most famous roles
in German, so it was agreed that the opera would be given in Italian; but
it then transpired that the chorus did not have time to learn their parts
in that language, so they continued to sing their parts in German. This sort
of practice, once not uncommon, is nowadays rightly regarded as totally unacceptable.
And so it is here. Moreover, apart from Tebaldi only one of the other singers
in this cast is Italian, and it is perfectly clear that the rest would all
have been much happier singing in the German text that presumably they knew
well.
Not, one uneasily suspects, that hearing them sing their roles in German would
have been much preferable. Hans Beirer was a workaday German heldentenor
who sang Tannhäuser for Karajan’s only live recording of the work, but hardly
deserved even that distinction. God knows one is often distressed by the sounds
of beefed-up lyric tenors straining to achieve the requisite volume in Otello,
but Beirer seems to come at the role from the opposite extreme. Even after
her death he addresses Desdemona as if she were a public meeting, and when
he does attempt to sing quietly he often drifts to the flat side of the note.
His lack of rhythmic accuracy also suggests that he would prefer to be singing
the role in German, and several times he finds himself at odds with Patanè
in the pit.
The generally reliable William Dooley seems overparted as Iago. He never sounds
in the least sinister, and looks at best like a nice boy gone slightly astray.
When he seeks to put more pressure on his voice, a judder intrudes; and his
attempt at a top A in his First Act drinking song is simply embarrassing.
Tebaldi here gives a performance that sounds much like her Desdemona in Karajan’s
more or less contemporary set for Decca; she occasionally phrases with more
delicacy and freedom, but similarly there is a sense of strain in the more
strenuous passages. The other Italian in the cast, Mario Ferrara, simply sounds
strained all the time. The other roles are taken competently.
Giuseppe Patanè conducts with vigour and energy, although there are times
when he is reduced to simply following his singers through their changes in
tempo. However he condones two cuts in the score. The second of these, the
removal of the interruption by the spectators at Otello’s suicide, reduces
Niun mi tema to a simple solo aria without any dramatic interaction,
which is bad enough. The first, even worse, is a massive truncation of the
great Third Act concertato - Karajan made the same barbarous cut
in his second recording for EMI - presumably made here to accommodate the
inability of the chorus to sing in Italian. Verdi allowed for an abridgement
of this passage in his French production of the opera in Paris – the result
can be heard on Mark Elder’s English-language recording – but the cut made
here is simply musically and dramatically unacceptable.
This DVD is a document of some historical interest for those interested in
seeing Tebaldi perform one of her great roles – although she is no
great shakes as an actress – but unfortunately, both because of the language
problems and the cavalier manner in which Patanè has savaged the score, it
cannot be regarded as a proper representation of Verdi’s great masterwork.
Il matrimonio segreto
If this production, billed in German as Das hausliche Ehe, is an
example of the German approach in the 1960s to comic opera and bel canto,
it is not a particularly good advertisement for the brand. Lorin Maazel hustles
the orchestra along at a very fast pace from the very start, and the big-boned
sound that he elicits from a substantial body of players sounds very old-fashioned
nowadays. It also compels the singers to force their tone, simply in order
to produce sufficient volume to ride over the storm that is emanating from
the pit. As the two young girls, Erika Köth and Lisa Otto both sound hassled
at times, and Köth’s vinegary tone is not always pleasant to hear. Both Donald
Grobe and Josef Greindl deliver their lines in full-bodied dramatic tones,
and both indulge in healthy amounts of aspiration to make their way around
the coloratura passages. The most stylish of the singing comes from
Patricia Johnson and Barry McDaniel, although the latter sounds unhappy in
his lower register.
The singers cannot have been helped by an ultra-fussy production, with enormous
amounts of stage ‘business’ to detract them from the not inconsiderable problems
of getting round the notes. Although it is the most recent of these television
broadcasts, the whole presentation seems to hark back to the bad old days
when neither performers nor audiences were expected to take the purely musical
demands of comic operatic scores with too much seriousness. The use of German
here really detracts from the light bubbling sounds of the words which one
expects. It is to be noted that even though the first performances of La
matrimonio segreto were given in German-speaking Vienna, they were given
in Cimarosa’s own native Italian; and the composer’s music is as closely allied
to that language as is that of Rossini. Altogether this charming score needs
more air, more light and shade, if it is to make its best effect.
Comparisons with alternative DVD versions, with the exception of the 1970
colour film of Fidelio from the same source, are not really on relevance
here. These discs should be regarded primarily as a record of performances
of historical interest, even if the monochrome colour and mono sound detract
from their overall attractiveness. There are no productorial ‘concepts’ to
get between the listener and the music, and the dramatic effects are by and
large taken seriously. Gustav Rudolf Sellner, the director of most of these
productions, has a number of original and sensible ideas, and the orchestral
playing is very fine throughout. If there are swings and roundabouts here,
the films deserve their resurrection and show the very fine ensemble that
was working in Berlin in the 1960s. The camera angles vary, and obviously
the performances that were staged specifically for television allow for more
close-ups, but generally they are pointing where they are needed. Now, if
only some of the London productions of that era had been recorded!
Paul Corfield Godfrey
One can only commend the German television companies for making the recordings
we have here.
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