Strauss, R: Capriccio

2CD+1CDR

Recorded in 1999

KARL BÖHM had a special affinity to the works of Richard Strauss, and here Golden Melodram presernt a 1960 performance from the Vienna State Opera of CAPRICCIO. This work is rather seldom performed as it needs a cast of specialists, but the State Opera had them in its famous Mozart ensemble.

Capriccio is universally recognised as one of the composer’s greatest and most subtle works.

The legendary record producer Walter Legge produced this landmark recording in London’s Kingsway Hall during 1957 and 1958, with his wife Elisabeth Schwarzkopf as the Countess.

She is accompanied by some of the finest singers of the day, including Eberhard Wächter, Nicolai Gedda, Dietrich Fischer- Dieskau, Christa Ludwig, and Hans Hotter, who had created the rôle of Olivier at the première.

So great are its musical merits that this mono recording has subsequently come to be recognised as a masterpiece in its own right.

Reissue Producer and Restoration Engineer: Mark Obert-Thorn

With its new production on 7th June 2008, the Vienna State Opera revived a long-standing tradition of having the finest representatives of the profession

singing Capriccio. The work was first staged in Salzburg in 1950 in a production subsequently seen in Vienna. Both there and in Salzburg, the Countess was for many years sung by Lisa Della Casa in one of the Strauss roles with which she was most closely associated.

The present live recording is the first official record of this ideal interpretation, with Georges Prêtre in the pit, vividly demonstrating his Strauss credentials.

It virtually goes without saying that the singers who were engaged to appear with Lisa Della Casa were in every way her equals.The difficulty in choosing between poetry and music becomes all the more understandable when the representatives of these two art forms are artists of the stature of Waldemar Kmentt and Walter Berry. Both men were among the company's leading singing actors, bringing to their parts both striking vocalism and an impassioned wooing of the woman on whom they have set their hearts. No less impressive is the American baritone Robert Kerns, whom Herbert von Karajan had invited to join the Vienna State Opera ensemble two years previously and who remained with the company until his premature death at the age of 55 in 1989.As the Count he displays natural charm in his attempts to win the hand of Christa Ludwig's imposing Clairon. Otto Wiener was more of a heroic baritone than either Berry or Kerns, allowing him to bring all the necessary authority to the role of the theatre manager La Roche and to his great address. Last, but not least, are the two 'Italian' singers, whom it would be difficult to imagine better cast today: the young Lucia Popp and Fritz Wunderlich turn Strauss’s witty parody of Italian bel canto singing into a serious highlight.