Der Rosenkavalier (review)

The late George Szell, music director of the Cleveland Orchestra from 1946 to 1970, is so associated with the symphonic repertoire that we tend to forget his excellence in opera. Any listener who has not experienced the operatic Szell will welcome this 1949 Rosenkavalier, in which he is unquestionably the star.

The Hungarian-born Szell "came up" professionally in the manner that has always been typical of aspiring conductors in the German-speaking countries—by starting out on the music staff of an opera house. He was already working at the Berlin Staatsoper at eighteen, and he took charge of performances in several other major German theaters over the next fourteen years. He conducted opera for a number of years in Prague, as well as in the United States after he resettled here in the late 1930s. During five seasons between 1942 and 1954 Szell led ninety Metropolitan Opera performances, including sixteen Rosenkavaliers plus works of Mozart, Wagner, Verdi, and Musorgsky. He had already taken up his appointment in Cleveland by the time he led Salzburg's Rosenkavalier, showing himself to be the equal of Krauss, Kleiber, and other contemporaries who shone in this work.

The keynote to Szell's performance is his theatrical timing; he seems unfailingly connected to the stage, and he allows the orchestra to participate as, for all intents and purposes, an added character in the drama. As every great Rosenkavalier conductor must do, he strikes exactly the right balance between lyricism, sparkle, and sheer boisterousness. Then as now, no orchestra can match the Vienna Philharmonic in this music, and it seems intent on giving its absolute best to the ever-exacting Szell, both in technical precision (listen to the deliciously scampering introduction to the Singer's aria) and in sumptuousness of sound. Each prelude, as well as the second-act entrance of Octavian, makes the necessary imposing impression, but not for its own sake; all stands in proportion to the rest of Szell's reading. What a considerate accompanist he is for singers, another reason to regret how little we have of him conducting complete stage works on disc, especially from the twentieth-century repertoire. In an ideal world, his recorded legacy would certainly have included performances of the most significant Strauss operas.

Szell's Salzburg cast looks very distinguished indeed on paper, but only in one case are expectations fulfilled: the Sophie of Hilde Gueden. She was thirty-one at the time, already ten years into her career, but the voice retains the youthful, bracing timbre that was hers alone among the great German and Austrian sopranos who graced the postwar Vienna Staatsoper and Salzburg Festival. Gueden was in every way the finest Sophie since Elisabeth Schumann. How marvelous to hear a high soprano whose words do not disappear the moment she moves above the staff! Gueden is not simply secure throughout the role's extended range; she has genuine body in her sound, and the strength is there to balance with her partners in the final trio. She also never cloys, as so many singers can in this role. The figure she presents is mettlesome, likable, and never exaggerated, even in the frantic chatter upon meeting the Marschallin in act 3.

It distresses me that a singer I have always immensely admired, Jarmila Novotná, is heard here well below her best form in the title role. This is a casting choice that most probably would not occur today (Novotná, after all, was a Donna Elvira, Violetta, Mimì, and Marenka). Up until the prime of Christa Ludwig, however, a soprano Octavian was perfectly usual on major stages. It was the dramatic soprano Eva...