In 1898 Richard Strauss,
irked by his native Munich’s rejection
of his first opera Guntram, as well
as the music of his hero Wagner, teamed
up with a local satirist Ernst von Wolzogen
to write a work, larded with Wagnerian
puns and references, all about a student
of magic who got his own back on a town
that had humiliated him. In other words,
he told the people of Munich where to
get off. Spleen is not an emotion likely
to inspire a great work of art, and
the opera has never really entered the
repertoire, though Mahler conducted
the Viennese première and in
England Sir Thomas Beecham conducted
it in 1910. Much later he made a recording
of the orchestral love-scene.
The present recording
is accompanied by a helpful introduction
but has no text, let alone a translation.
Indeed, surfing around the Internet
in the hope of finding a libretto and
translation, I found instead a correspondence
lamenting that not even the publishers
(Boosey & Hawkes) can provide an
English translation and the only one
ever made was for a vocal score in English
only (for the 1910 production?), long
out of print. The brief synopsis here
tells a story with two characters, a
minor intervention from a third plus
a few from the townsfolk (the chorus).
As you can see, the opera actually has
a rather large cast and it would be
nice to know what they are all doing.
Forced to judge the
work as a 90-minute symphonic poem with
voices, I can only say it comes out
of it pretty well. Richard Strauss seems
to have forgotten his spleen when he
actually got down to creating music,
and here we have a continuous stream
of alternately lively, fantastic, sumptuous
and passionate music, with the love
scenes the obvious highlights.
Other recordings, both
from Munich, are a live 1958 version
with Maud Cunitz and Marcel Cordes under
Kempe on Orfeo and a studio version
from about 1985 with Varady and Weikl
under Heinz Fricke on Arts Music. Both
seem to provide a libretto, though no
translation. You might say the one has
the conductor, the other has the singers.
This one has both.
Though live, it appears to have been
two concert performances excellently
recorded by Berlin Radio, albeit with
the voices a mite too far forward as
they often were in those days. Gundula
Janowitz soars with all the Straussian
voluptuousness at her command, Shirley-Quirk
is thoroughly in control of the high
tessitura and Leinsdorf shows not only
the firm architectural grasp we might
take for granted, but also a spontaneity,
wit and tenderness which he is popularly
supposed to have lacked. Some of the
smaller parts struggle a bit with the
tessitura, but without a libretto it’s
a bit difficult to say who is the culprit.
If the lack of a libretto does not worry
you, you can safely go for this set.
The other two versions
spread the work over two CDs (interestingly,
Kempe’s timing is identical to Leinsdorf’s,
Fricke takes three minutes more); the
present issue, evidently aimed at fans
of Janowitz, has a selection from Spontini’s
La Vestale, again a concert performance
for a major European radio station.
Though the recording companies thought
Janowitz could sing only Mozart, Strauss
and Lieder, she did have such things
as Aida in her repertoire and is fully
in command of an opera which sits somewhere
between Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito,
late Gluck and Bellini. Her radiant
tone and fine line are always in evidence,
and are basically the tools with which
she makes her characterization – a Tebaldi
concept rather than a Callas one, you
might say. The other parts are at least
adequate, as far as I can tell from
a selection which includes them only
where they have duets or ensembles with
the heroine, and somewhat more than
that in the case of Ruza Baldani’s Grande
Vestale.
Off-the-air or not,
Ponto had a good source for Feuersnot.
Here, the congested, monophonic and
distorted sound is typical of home-taping
on moderate equipment, the sort of thing
you might describe as "not bad
for what it is" if it dated from
about 1955. If the original tapes are
still held by the RAI (I think there’s
a 90% chance that they are and sound
fine), then it really would be worthwhile
for someone (Warner Fonit?) to remaster
them and issue the performance properly
(and complete). Since the two commercial
recordings, under Kühn and Muti,
are inadequately cast, this adequately
cast version (and much more than that
in the case of Janowitz) under a conductor
well versed in this sort of thing would
be the first choice.
For what it’s worth,
more or less bootleg versions of La
Vestale have appeared at one time or
another with Callas (in a version cut
to the bone), the young Renata Scotto
conducted by the elderly Vittorio Gui
(also with plenty of cuts), Caballé,
Kabaivanska and the present performance
in its complete form.
Still, if it’s Feuersnot
you want, since the alternative versions
have nothing extra, even if you regard
this "bonus" as non-existent
it doesn’t really enter the equation.
Christopher Howell
PONTO PO-1034 [78:14 + 76:15] 
