Friederike (1928) [95.06]
Helen Donath (soprano) – Friederike); Adolf Dallapozza (tenor) - Goethe; Martin Finke (tenor) - Lenz; Gabriele Fuchs (soprano) - Salomea; Helene Grabenhorst (soprano) - Hortense; Erika Rüggeberg (soprano) - Liselotte; Gudrun Greindl-Rosner (alto) - Dorothée; Harry Kalenberg - Duke; Gustl Datz - Brion; Maria Stadler - Magdalena; Christian Wolff - Weyland; Jürgen von Pawls – Knebel
Bavarian Radio Chorus, Munich Radio Orchestra/Heinz Wallberg
rec. Bavarian Radio, 2-6 May 1980
WARNER CLASSICS 9605512 [41.37 + 53.29]
During the 1960s and 1970s EMI in Germany produced a whole raft
of complete studio recordings of light operas and operettas -
and not such light ones, too. The casts were drawn from a roster
of singers working in German opera houses and good orchestras
- usually the Munich Radio Orchestra. The conductors were sympathetic
with the idiom of the works they were presenting. Some of these
recordings did not make it into the catalogues outside Germany
at the time, but most did, and when they emerged they were extremely
well presented. The boxes contained substantial notes on the works
themselves, along with complete texts and translations –
which were extremely necessary in the case of works which were
lay well outside the mainstream repertory. However many of these
LP boxes did not maintain a presence in the catalogues for very
long, and became something in the nature of collectors’
items.
Since the advent of CD the supply of original recordings from
these sources tended to dry up, but over the years the originals
have frequently been re-mastered and reissued; and since the original
recordings were always very decently made - and often more than
that - their reappearance has been welcome. Sadly the standards
of the original presentations have slipped, with the translations
being the first to be jettisoned. Now – in the most recent
issues which have been emerging over the last couple of years
– the original texts have also been omitted. This reissue
of Lehár’s ‘singspiel’ Friederike
comes as part of a rather oddly named ‘Cologne Collection’
which also includes such rarities as Lortzing’s Zar
and Zimmermann and Undine, Zeller’s Der
Vogelhändler and (on a more serious level) Humperdinck’s
Königskinder. The notes now provided are niggardly
in the extreme; here we have a mere two pages which describe the
genesis of the work but give the non-German listener no synopsis
of the plot whatsoever to assist comprehension. It is regrettable
indeed that Warner, who have taken over the reissue of these EMI
recordings, are continuing the policy of their predecessors in
presenting these discs to potential purchasers in a manner that
would seem to be designed to discourage any non-German customer
from making the effort to get to know these works. I know that
Warner and EMI are not the only offenders in this regard, but
they really should know better.
Having got that off my chest, let us turn to the set under consideration.
Lehár described Friederike as a ‘singspiel’
and not an ‘operetta’, a distinction which has real
meaning in this case. This is not the light-hearted romp that
one would expect from an operetta pure and simple. It is quite
a serious work, with only the presence of spoken dialogue to distinguish
it from a full-scale opera – the same terminology is used,
for example, to describe Mozart’s Entführung aus
dem Serail. The two leading roles in this set are taken by
full-blooded opera singers in the shape of Helen Donath, Eva in
Karajan’s Meistersinger, and Adolf Dallapozza,
David in Solti’s first recording of the same work. Both
of them also feature in the two leading roles of Humperdinck’s
Königskinder, where their parts are decidedly in
the ‘heavy’ league. Lehár originally wrote
the leading tenor role for Richard Tauber — one of several
stage works written with this singer in mind — and obviously
expected something rather more than the usual light operetta voice
in the part.
The work received a mixed reception from critics when it was new,
many of the more conservative elements objecting to the portrayal
on stage of Germany’s leading poet in the guise of a romantic
lover. Goethe himself had already made his abortive love affair
public in his own words, although according to Ingo Dorfmüller’s
booklet note he was somewhat more than “economical with
the truth” when describing events. The librettists Fritz
Löhner and Ludwig Herzer toned down the more unsavoury aspects
of Goethe’s conduct, but only at the expense of departing
even further from reality. However they did preserve the parting
of the two lovers at the end of the action, as indeed was not
unusual in Lehár’s later operettas with their bitter-sweet
conclusions. Lehár responded with music that avoided full
symphonic gestures, but the orchestration is often more than a
simple accompaniment. He did not shirk the use of Wagnerian leitmotifs
in the construction of the score — although these usually
take the form of orchestral recapitulations of earlier melodies
rather than shorter symphonic phrases.
Yet we must be careful not to treat Friederike too seriously,
either. Although it might seem to inhabit much the same world
as Puccini’s La Rondine — which the composer
originally intended to be treated as a ‘Viennese operetta’
— Puccini and Lehár were coming at their subjects
from very different and opposite angles. The booklet notes on
Goethe’s Sesenheim Idyll are dismissive of the
poet’s fictionalisation of his own personal experiences,
but surely Goethe was following in the footsteps of works such
as Lawrence Sterne’s Tristam Shandy, a novel which
had a wide vogue on the Continent in both French and German translations
during Goethe’s early years.
The pastoral overture, delivered with delicacy by the Munich orchestra
under Wallberg, concludes with birdsong to depict the rural setting
although the following dialogue is delivered in a very resonant
indoor studio acoustic. The following musical numbers for the
heroine are distinctly in operetta style interspersed with spoken
dialogue; it is not until track 7, some ten minutes or so into
Act One, that we have more extended musical material with the
entry of Goethe himself. He has more substantial and serious writing
to contend with, culminating with the eleven-minute finale to
the Act which culminates in his O Mädchen, mein Mädchen
which provided the one real ‘hit’ in the original
score. In this number, written as a showpiece for Tauber, Adolf
Dallapozza is described by Kurt Gänzl in his Musical
Theatre on Record as “uncomfortable, even unsteady
and verging on the out-of-tune”. This seems rather harsh;
although he is admittedly not in his best voice, his well-rounded
tones fit the role well, and even Gänzl admits that he “does
some nice things”. Gänzl also complains of Helen Donath’s
style in the title role, stating that a “much simpler voice
or production is needed” – but again one welcomes
the fact that the role is given the full measure of delivery that
fits the subject. The secondary pair of singers, Martin Finke
and Gabriele Fuchs, have more conventionally operetta-type voices
but still strike the right sense of romantic warmth. These are
the only soloists featured in Act One; on the second CD we encounter
a whole bevy of female comprimario roles, which are taken
well. The other male roles are all assigned to speaking actors,
but their contributions are well integrated into the whole. The
last Act, which terminates very abruptly, is less satisfactory
musically than its predecessors (as is so often the case with
Viennese operettas), but the final orchestral reminiscence of
O Mädchen, mein Mädchen has quite enough sentiment
to bring the idyll to a charming close.
This recording was the first complete Friederike in the
catalogues – previous releases had only given excerpts from
the score – and it does not appear to have had any successors.
This one suffers perhaps from a surfeit of not very convincing
sound effects — surely we do not need to hear the bleating
lamb before Lenz’s Lämmchen brav — although
the dialogue is well produced and delivered by the singers with
a proper sense of engagement. Despite Gänzl’s strictures,
the set was generally well received by both Gramophone
and the Penguin Guide on its earlier CD reissue in 1994,
and rightly so. One just wishes that this new version could have
been better treated in terms of its presentation. The spoken dialogue,
occupying some fifteen minutes (not all separately tracked), is
pretty meaningless except to native German speakers. The missing
material already exists in booklets for the original LP issues;
could it not at the very least be made available online?
Paul Corfield Godfrey
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