To listen to these five CD reissues of classic Viennese operettas is to revisit what seems like a golden age, when the recording of Viennese operetta in more or less complete versions actually went beyond Die Fledermaus and Die lustige Witwe.
EMI's later version of Das Land des Lachelns (4/88—nla), Lehar's portrayal of the clash of western and eastern cultures, is far more complete and in richer sound than the version here. However, it does not necessarily overshadow this 1967 recording in terms of performance. The great glory of this earlier version is the singing of Nicolai Gedda, who brings off ''Dein ist mein ganzes Herz'' and the other Tauber favourites to splendid effect. With a distinguished supporting cast, including a secondary pair of singers who contrast well with the more serious leading pair, it's a recording to savour.
So is that of Der Bettelstudent. Carl Millocker may have left less of a mark on posterity than his two great compatriots, Johann Strauss and Franz von Suppe, but his masterpiece deserves to be classed with the best output of those other two masters. With a setting of Krakow in 1704, Millocker rose to the stimulus of a fine book by Vienna's top librettists, Zell and Genee, and produced a marvellously crafted score full of swinging melodies and a splendid sense of ongoing momentum. Though much lighter in style than those in Das Land des Lachelns, the tenor solos here are scarcely less rewarding, and once again it is Gedda's performance that shines out, albeit with fine support again from Anneliese Rothenberger and Renate Holm.
If the two later recordings under Heinz Wallberg are rather less successful, it is perhaps as much due to the works themselves as the performances. Lehar's Friederike, a romanticized story of Goethe's love for an Alsatian pastor's daughter, is strictly speaking not an operetta at all but a Singspiel or 'play with music'. Much dialogue intersperses solos and duets divided between two couples of lovers, with just a few choral contributions. Since the voices of the two couples are not too greatly contrasted in this recording, there is not the variety of sound one might expect from a Lehar score. On the other hand, there are typically glorious songs Lehar songs—''O Madchen, mein Madchen'', ''Warum hast du mich wachgekusst?'', as well as his setting of Goethe's ''Sah' ein Knab' ein Roslein steh'n''—and some typically glorious Lehar orchestration.
In the case of Gasparone, Millocker's second best score, there are once again some swinging waltz tunes, and the story of banditry in a Sicilian setting is an appealing one. Unfortunately the version used is a corrupt 1930s one with a rewritten book and redistributed score, which destroys much of the cumulative musico-dramatic effect at which Millocker was such an expert.
Finally Giuditta, in which Lehar's more ambitious later writing found its ideal expression, with a score written for Tauber and the Vienna State Opera and using a particularly opulent orchestration. Though Gedda takes the Tauber role again, his voice had by this time lost earlier glories, and the part is in any case a fiendishly difficult one. For all its much better sound-quality, this recording does not altogether surpass Decca's early stereo version from which extended excerpts have just been reissued. There Hilde Gueden was a far more alluring Giuditta than Edda Moser here. Yet this is a shimmeringly beautiful score, full of glorious full-blooded melody and like Der Bertelstudent and Das Land des Lachelns, it should be in every Viennese operetta collection. Even if one can't quite say that of Friederike and Gasparone, there is unlikely to be another opportunity to hear either of them complete. One way or another these are reissues to be welcomed and snapped up.'