J. STRAUSS II Der Carneval in Rom • Ernst Theis, cond; Isabella Ma-Zach ( Marie ); Michael Heim ( Arthur ); Jessica Glatte ( Countess Falconi ); Manfred Equiluz ( Count Falconi ); Marcus Günzel ( Hesse ); Bernd Könnes ( Rafaeli ); Dresden St Op O & Ch • CPO 777 405-2 (2 CDs: 95:47) Live: Dresden 2008


Johann Strauss Junior’s second operetta, Der Carneval in Rom, premiered in 1873 only one year before Die Fledermaus, and while the music is enjoyable enough, with several nice tunes, there is little in the score to presage the gorilla blockbuster soon to come. For one thing, Strauss wrote the music in the more romantic style of light opera because the work was originally scheduled to be mounted at the Vienna court opera, a place of more serious mien than the Theater an der Wien, then the home of the comic-oriented Viennese operetta. When it turned out the production had to be premiered at the latter venue, Vienna’s reigning Waltz King found himself with a score full of choruses and ensembles, few of his signature waltz melodies but plenty of sprightly polka rhythms. In fact, Strauss referred to Der Carneval in Rom as his “polka opera.”


The story is typically slight. Marie, a young girl living in a rural village high in the Alps, longs for her beloved Arthur, a painter who has gone to Rome to make a living, and she decides to go after him. When she arrives in Rome, in the midst of preparations for Carnival, she discovers Arthur is making a living selling spurious religious relics and is more interested in chasing the flirtatious Countess Falconi than in doing much painting. Marie approaches Arthur disguised as a boy and persuades him to take her on as his apprentice. Arthur is too busy planning assignations with the wayward Countess under the very nose of the perpetually jealous Count to pay much attention to Marie. After a couple of typical light-opera mistaken-identity encounters during the love trysts (think Le Nozze di Figaro ) involving Arthur, the Countess, and Marie, the young painter finally recognizes his true love from the mountains, and they pledge their eternal devotion as the Carnival erupts joyfully around them at the finale.


This 2008 recording of Der Carneval in Rom by the German label cpo is virtually a world first. At one time there was a quite ancient RCA LP of only the musical numbers from a 1936 German revival, but this is the first modern CD set and the first with any dialogue. The spoken parts may be cut, without libretto or score I cannot tell, but there is certainly enough there to provide the story clearly to German-speaking listeners, and I believe the original music is all present and accounted for, based on a newly issued critical edition. The producers have even added back in a “lost” coloratura aria for the Countess, which Strauss added to the production a few days after the first night. To its credit, cpo has also recently given us a world premiere of Strauss’s Das Spitzentuch der Konigen (reviewed favorably in Fanfare 33:4 by Christopher Williams) and is planning to release another first-timer, Prinz Methusalen , which they have already recorded. It seems incredible that there are still unrecorded stage works by this iconic Viennese master and one sincerely hopes cpo has the interest and the resources to eventually do them all.


The Dresden State Operetta Orchestra, under the direction of principal conductor Ernst Theis, and its chorus are both better than good and two of the strongest features of this recording. German and Austrian musicians seem to have Strauss’s feather-light, quicksilver music bubbling in their blood; they are the finest in the world at reproducing it. The sound recording is also first-rate, with absolutely no audience noise on a so-called live performance. The singing is solid if not spectacular by artists active in regional German houses and elsewhere. The only holdover from Das Spitzentuch is lyric soprano Jessica Glatte. Here she sings the role of the Countess Falconi, doing a quite credible job of the difficult coloratura aria “Gefangen trauern,” added by the composer when the winds of faint praise were presumably beginning to waft over the production. Glatte is good elsewhere as well, playing the bitchy and bewitching Countess as if she owns the role and adding a sparking top to several well-sung ensembles. The Marie, soprano Isabella Ma-Zach, sometimes goes wandering in search of a note here and there, but is generally pretty good; she renders Strauss’s romantic music for the young Alpine lover in a manner most often quite well sung and pleasurable to the ear. Marie’s entrance aria in the first act became a hit for the original cast’s superstar, Marie Geistinger, a Vienna favorite in the mid 19th century, and Ma-Zach carries it off well here, showing us why the piece gained such widespread popularity. The men are solid also, the Arthur of Michael Heim and the Count of Manfred Equiluz both sung quite competently. Bernd Könnes, in the role of the painter Rafaeli, exhibits a vocal wobble more like a bleat, hard on the ear, but fortunately the part is not very big. As in several other Strauss operettas the cast is large, and the remaining singers here perform quite well.


The booklet is first-rate, with a track-keyed synopsis, extended essays, and synopses in German, English, and French. The English translations are sometimes a bit dicky and I’m bothered a little more than fellow reviewer Williams by the lack of libretto and translation, but this set is a must-have for all J. Strauss fans and operetta lovers as well. We may never see its like again.


FANFARE: Bill White

Classical Music

While starting his career adhering to Brahms’ “absolute” or “formalist” compositional approach, Richard Strauss rapidly turned into a staunch supporter of Wagner’s Zukunftsmusik, writing a series of iconoclast symphonic poems full of metaphysical allusions. This album features both sides of Strauss’s musical persona with the Burleske in D minor as well as Ein Heldenleben. While the former is a playful, miniature quasi concerto for piano and orchestra, the latter epitomises Strauss’s symphonic style: majestic, virtuosically orchestrated, full of grand ideas, but never without irony. In that respect, Ein Heldenleben has more in common with Burleske than one would expect. Strauss’ arguably satirical self-identification with the hero of his symphonic poem is underlined by recurrent self-quotations from previous compositions. The central role of the solo violin makes it another solo concerto in disguise, albeit less overtly than Burleske. These two remarkable pieces are performed by the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and their chief conductor Marc Albrecht, with Denis Kozhukhin delivering the solo piano part in Burleske. Albrecht and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra have released acclaimed albums such as Mahler Song Cycles with Alice Coote (2017) and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 with Elizabeth Watts (2015). Kozhukhin has recorded piano concertos by Ravel and Gershwin (2018) as well as Tchaikovsky and Grieg (2016), and has been extensively praised for his Brahms Ballads & Fantasies solo album (2017).

Classical Music

With his Alpine Symphony, Richard Strauss all but invited us to see it as a veritable "summit" in the genre of programme music. It is masterly in its layer upon layer of orchestration (not unlike a mountain massif), while it's harmonic and motivic riches offer a sublime acoustic panorama that is gigantic in scope. It is as if the composer has here exhausted the possibilities of the genre. But what if one were to explain this grandiose music aside from Strauss's own programme, and divorced from his own biography? This is the approach taken by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under its music director Andris Nelsons. They have already released a highly praised Strauss disc on Orfeo with Ein Heldenleben and the Rosenkavalier Suite, and Nelsons understands how to convey his fascination with Strauss to both the orchestra and his listeners with utter conviction. Musical intoxication is transformed by Nelsons into a flush of freedom - freedom for all, but of the artist in particular. There are naturally also moments of solitude and reflection - as when, for example, Strauss makes thematic allusions to Also sprach Zarathustra (at the "summit" of the Alpine Symphony). Then there is the sense of calm exuded towards the end of the Symphony that is subtly savoured to the full after the storms that marked the descent. Strauss was not just concerned with personal liberty, but was also capable of enthusiastic liberality - as in his opera Salome, which caused such a scandal at the time of its world première. This is made clearly audible in the brilliant encore that the CBSO and Nelsons offer here, namely the "Dance of the Seven Veils". We rarely hear it so finely tuned and with such unerring accuracy in its orchestral colours and rhythmic density, not to mention the climaxes and shifts in tempi. This "classic" of the early 20th century could hardly be played in a fresher, more contemporary manner.

"Like his mentor Mariss Jansons, Andris Nelsons has developed a special affinity with the music of Richard Strauss, in which his conducting combines a thrilling impulse with an appreciation of the finer points of instrumental detail and evocative atmosphere. In a mammoth work such as Also sprach Zarathustra, Strauss does lay traps for interpreters who maybe have less finely honed instincts of taste, pacing and orchestral texture than Nelsons does, but his vision of this half-hour, Nietzsche-inspired score is of such clarity and integrity as to cast aside the accusations of posturing and garishness that are sometimes levelled against it." - Geoffrey Norris, The Telegraph

Classical Music

Richard Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier, Op. 59, TrV 227 (Live)

Richard Strauss: Elektra, Op. 58, TrV 223 (Recorded 1957) [L

Strauss: Salome, Op. 54, TrV 215 (Live)

Classical Music

Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

Classical Music

STRAUSS, R.: Salome (French version) [Opera]

The combination of Der Rosenkavalier and Dresden has always been very special. The work was premiered at the Semperoper in 1911- and was an immediate sensation. The dress rehearsal alone received more comprehensive press coverage than the Kaiser’s birthday on the same day, with reporters racing to wire the wonderful success to their papers. The Deutsche Reichsbahn scheduled special trains to bring ardent musiclovers from other places to the city on the Elbe. There was perhaps a feeling that it would be the last European operatic event before the First World War broke out… Not least the work itself contributed to the nostalgic fin-de-siecle atmosphere. Strauss and his librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal had written a “comedy for music” in which the Rococo era of Maria Theresia’s Vienna was revived- not for historical reasons, but as a reflection on their own apocalyptic mood. Everything seems so genuine in this piece and yet it is all an illusion. From the solemn presentation of the rose (a Hofmannsthal invention) to the Viennese waltz mania, it is a musical anachronism- which makes its timelessness all too clear. The work was premiered in January 1911, not in Vienna, but in opera-loving Dresden, where Strauss’s “personal conductor” general music director Ernst von Schuch conducted the Dresden Hofkapelle (today’s Staatskapelle), which Strauss deemed to be “the best opera orchestra in the world.” The Staatskapelle musicians still play their idol’s work from the original orchestral parts of the premiere.