Perhaps one should
distinguish between historic recordings,
which make history, and historical
ones, which simply document something
that happened. This one tells us that
the Berlin Deutsche Oper took Figaro
on tour to Tokyo in October 1963.
Like a lot of live
reissues, this one rehearses quite a
number of known features. This same
production, after some further honing
and a few changes in cast, was recorded
in the studio, again under Karl Böhm,
by Deutsche Grammophon and issued in
1968. This time Hermann Prey was the
Figaro, Gundula Janowitz the Countess
and Tatiana Troyanos the Cherubino,
while Fischer-Dieskau remained the Count,
Edith Mathis had been promoted to Susanna
and (relatively minor matters) Patricia
Johnson, Peter Lagger and Barbara Vogel
retained their present roles. Karl Böhm,
for his part, had already recorded Figaro
back in 1938 in Dresden and again
(in Vienna for Philips) in the 1950s,
where the present Walter Berry sang
Figaro. Fischer-Dieskau’s Count had
previously been recorded under Ferenc
Fricsay in the 1950s (for DG) and was
to appear again in the 1970s in the
first of Daniel Barenboim’s two recordings,
based on an Edinburgh Festival production.
Interest, then, would seem to centre
upon hearing some of these performers
live, in the Countess of Elizabeth Grümmer
and – but to a much lesser extent –
in Erika Köth’s Susanna.
The reputation of Karl
Böhm (1894-1981) has not held up
all that well since his death; frankly,
I find it strange that a conductor whose
fame was based above all on the theatre
(I am, of course, well aware that he
also recorded praised cycles of the
symphonies of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert
and Brahms) should approach one of the
most enlivening of all comic operas
through the eyes of the symphonic conductor,
treating the music in abstract, as it
were, divorced from both the words and
the situations. Edith Mathis gets herself
into a fine frenzy with Cherubino’s
lines about "read it to Barbarina,
to Marcellina, read it to every woman
in the palace", but to what avail
when she is obliged to sing "Non
so più cosa son, cosa faccio"
with a sort of sedate elegance and a
romantically drawn out ending which
surely has little to do with either
Cherubino or Mozart. For much of the
first two acts the cast’s attempts to
inject the right comic spirit (and they
do try, hear Susanna and Marcellina
in their mud-slinging duet) have to
come to terms with Böhm’s sound
common sense in the pit. The serious
approach might be expected to come into
its own in the Countess’s aria "Porgi
amor" and up to a point it does,
though the tempo is allowed to sag towards
the end, as is the already slow tempo
for Cherubino’s second aria "Voi
che sapete". In the long finale
to Act 2, however, the performance at
last gets up a head of steam (even here
I would describe the pacing as symphonic
rather than theatrical, but it’s certainly
exciting) and thereafter things go much
better. Perhaps the transit to Tokyo
was not without its problems, for all
sorts of minor orchestral glitches bedevil
the earlier part of the work – later
on things settle down though this is
hardly the Berlin Philharmonic.
Under the circumstances
perhaps we cannot blame Walter Berry
(1929-2000) for working a shade too
hard at his gags, but it’s a fine assumption
all the same. Of the singers "new"
to the work’s discography, Erika Köth
(1927-1989) need not detain us very
long. Hers is a light, soubrettish soprano
timbre, which is no bad thing for Susanna,
but not always steady or even between
her registers, which is a doubtful blessing
in any role. Passable but hardly historic.
Far more significant is the Countess
of Elisabeth Grümmer (1911-1986).
Though she was nearing the end of a
distinguished career her voice remains
extremely beautiful (a slight beat has
entered if we compare her with her 1953
self in the Rossini Stabat Mater),
and her breath control exemplary. She
loses pitch slightly on the F near the
beginning of "Porgi amor"
but this is a minor lapse (remember
she has been sitting "cold"
in the wings all through the first act)
but everything else goes very finely
indeed and she rises effortlessly to
her two top Cs in the trio. Her recitatives,
though, are a shade deliberate and hectoring
– it is here rather than in the sung
numbers that she betrays her age, even
though she makes a lot of her words
at certain points. Also of considerable
interest is the young Edith Mathis’s
Cherubino, lively and pert in her recitatives.
Thanks in part to Böhm’s tempi
she sounds too feminine in her arias
and it is easy to see why she was shifted
to the role of Susanna. I’m glad to
have heard her Cherubino, however.
Though we hardly needed
this further demonstration, there is
no doubt from the moment Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
enters that we are in the presence of
a master. Every word in his recitatives,
indeed every pause between words, has
been minutely considered so that every
shade of emotion, suspicion, doubt,
anger and (in his first exchange with
Susanna) smarmy womanizing registers
with the listener. Does he overdo it?
This is a question which was asked over
and again during the fifty or so years
of his career. Certainly a moment such
as his ire in discovering that Cherubino
has not left the palace after all has
a whiff of Sturmtruppen to it,
yet there is no gainsaying the vividness
of it all, and each member of the cast,
in his or her exchanges with him, is
inspired to give a little more than
they do or their own.
Of the rest of the
cast, Patricia Johnson (b. 1934) plays
Marcellina as a right old battle-axe.
I know this is, or was, the usual way,
and Susanna’s description of her as
a "dottoressa arrogante" might
be freely translated thus; but the "old
harridan" interpretation will only
work if her aria is omitted, as it is
here, since that sort of old-sounding
mezzo-soprano just couldn’t sing it
(it goes up to a high B twice). The
first complete Figaro on record,
that conducted by Erich Kleiber (on
Decca), resorted to having the Susanna
(Hilde Gueden) sing Marcellina’s aria
since Hildegard Rössl-Majdan was
patently not up to it. More recent complete
recordings, therefore, have had to rethink
Marcellina, casting her as a soprano
or at least a highish mezzo. However,
reviews suggest that Böhm’s studio
recording, again with Johnson, is uncut,
so I wonder how she managed.
Another aria which
used to be cut regularly (and is so
here) is that for Basilio. Since Julius
Katona’s performance of the role is
none too pleasant, and I mean vocally,
not unpleasant in the way the character
should be, the loss is not very great.
Bartolo, and Barbarina are well taken.
The recording has all
the bangs and bumps and changes of perspective
we expect from a live source, and the
concluding orchestral passages to most
of the numbers (including the whole
of the march which ends Act 1) have
to be heard against a barrage of applause,
so all things considered this is a specialist
issue, mainly intended for admirers
of Grümmer.
They will certainly
be rewarded by what are oddly called
the "bonus tracks" – a complete
(apart from a few cuts in the last two
numbers) performance of Rossini’s Stabat
Mater. This, too, revamps a known
factor, namely Ferenc Fricsay’s interpretation
which he recorded for DG with his own
Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra and
a generally more celebrated cast. However,
the recording is this time remarkably
good for its age (and the audience is
so quiet I only realised the performance
was live when the applause began at
the end) and the conductor’s dramatically
effective, occasionally personalised,
interpretation can be enjoyed, though
if the metronome marks in the Ricordi
vocal score are Rossini’s own (maybe
they are not) several of his tempi in
the early stages would seem too fast.
I trust that better brass intonation
was obtained at the start of "Inflammatus"
in the studio recording but otherwise
the Cologne forces acquit themselves
well.
Once again, the performance
of Elisabeth Grümmer is perhaps
the principal interest. At around this
time she recorded a famous Eva in Meistersinger
under Kempe and her radiant, secure
and ringing tones are equally effective
here. But, though otherwise little-known,
the whole cast is actually rather good.
Maria von Ilosvay has admirable steadiness
and musicality, though she rewrites
parts of "Fac ut portem" to
sidestep the problems created by Rossini’s
longer phrases. The note-writer, Andrew
Palmer, shoots himself in the foot by
referring to the "famous high D
flat" in the tenor aria; as a matter
of fact Walther Ludwig uses a rewritten
cadenza which reaches only B flat. Well,
better that than making a fool of himself
attempting a note he hasn’t got. What
he does have is a pleasing, easy
emission, a typical German tenor in
the Ernst Haefliger mould. Palmer also
mentions the trill in the bass aria
which, as Gramophone’s Rossini expert
Richard Osborne has often pointed out,
has scarcely been attempted since Pol
Plançon in the earliest days
of recorded sound. I must say I can’t
for the life of me see why it should
be such a problem, since trills of this
kind are bread and butter for any singer
specialising in the baroque, but there
it is. Helmuth Fehn doesn’t try but
is otherwise effective. Reissued on
its own, the claims of this Stabat
would need to be weighed very carefully
against those of Fricsay’s DG recording.
Christopher Howell
Elisabeth Grümmer (soprano), Maria von
Ilosvay (contralto), Walther Ludwig (tenor),
Helmuth Fehn (bass), Cologne Radio Chorus and
Symphony Orchestra/Ferenc Fricsay 
