| |
| Naxos Opera Classics (Super budget price) (CD) 8 660030/1 (two discs: 149 minutes: DDD). Notes and Italian text included. |
|
| |
| Solti (10/91) (DECC) 433 210-2DH2 |
|
| |
| Oestman (2/94) (L'OI) 440 085-2OHO2 |
|
Naxos have done it again. Once more they effectively challenge the hegemony of more prestigious companies that sell their wares at full price. Somebody in this tightly run, adventurous company has an eye and ear for sensible, middle-of-the-road casting and young invigorating conductors. This version of a much-recorded work isn't quite going to topple from their perch the leaders in the field, but at the price the set is a formidable rival to them.
Halasz, one of Naxos's house conductors, is now a Kapellmeister at the Vienna State Opera and his reading, steeped in the tradition of that theatre, uses several singers working there at the moment. All have travelled the comparatively short journey down the Danube to take part in this recording in Budapest. Halasz follows the current fashion for swift tempos (though "Ach, ich fuhl's" is much slower than on the recent Oestman set, and possibly better for it) but allows time on the way to survey the instrumental countryside and enjoy its details; and his penchant for speed doesn't exclude seriousness, as in the Masonic mysteries of Osiris and the episode of the Armed Men, which are given their due weight.
There is no weakness in his large cast and several strengths, chief among them Tichy's endearing Papageno, Prey-like in timbre, more Viennese than that famous interpreter in dialogue, where Kunz comes to mind. Tichy had been singing unobtrusively in Vienna for almost 20 years before being accorded this, his first major recording. It was worth waiting for: this birdcatcher is a delightful fellow to meet, with a smile in his voice and, one imagines, a spring in his gait. Solti's Kraus is even more characterful in dialogue but not as pleasing as Tichy in his singing.
As Tamino, Lippert is an eager, winning Prince, as he showed at Covent Garden last season. Like Tichy, Viennese-trained, his Mozartian style is faultless and he is quite as accomplished in the part as Streit for Oestman and Heilmann for Solti. With Lopardo, Ainsley and Rainer Trost in the running, we are spoilt for choice just now among Mozartian tenors. Lippert is certainly in that class.
With a touch of steel in her timbre (compare Ziesak on Decca) and a rather more full-bodied delivery than the role usually receives, Norberg-Schulz's Pamina will not be to the liking of those who look for a deal of subtlety in this role. I like her unaffected, mettlesome, open-throated singing while ideally looking for a more pointed use of the text, but she is in a way typical of this unadorned and straightforward reading. So is Kurt Rydl's sonorous, unportentous Sarastro, though, in his case, an incipient wobble is troublesome in "O Isis und Osiris". Similarly, Robert Holzer's grave Speaker isn't perfectly steady.
I have no reservations at all about Hellen Kwon's Queen of Night. As accurate and fleet as the ubiquitous Sumi Jo (Solti and Oestman), she delivers her imprecations with much more positive bile, approaching the dramatic-coloratura ideal for this fiendish (in both senses) role. As Monostatos, the other malign character, Gahmlich sings with the right priapic ferocity arising from incisive tone and words. Ladies and Boys are all more than adequate. So are the Two Armed Men who double as speaking Priests. Lotte Leitner is as delightfully fresh a Papagena as she was for Solti.
The recording is beautifully balanced and allows plenty of air around the voices and orchestra, but does not always achieve the warmth and intimacy of the Haas-produced L'Oiseau-Lyre and Decca sets, particularly the former. The selection of dialogue is sensible—the eighteen-eighty joke when Papagena appears as an old woman is for once omitted, no great loss.
I shall not recommend this version above the rightly admired Solti and Oestman, which have been more carefully and intimately produced and engineered. However, I don't think their undoubted (and rather different) merits, or those of any of the mid-price versions, are sufficient for them to be preferred to this admirable and attractive version by anyone for whom its huge price advantage is there for the taking.
AB