This production of Johann Strauss II's Der Zigeunerbaron (The Gypsy Baron) is a part of a series of recorded operettas presented by Seefestspiele Mörbisch, or, in English, The Mörbisch Lake Festival, on the Oehms Classics label. It's unusual for the quality of an opera recording to be divided along lines of gender, but if there is any legitimate existence of such a phenomenon on disc, it is found here. The men in the cast make the most of their characterizations of the gypsies, singing in as guttural a German as they can muster and pulling out all the stops on silliness; these parts of the opera make for delightful listening. But the women are not up to the same standard and seem a bit under the music most of the time. Martina Serafin as Saffi certainly does not sound like her usual self here, and in the "Zigeunerlied" she is weak sounding, a shame as elsewhere on disc Serafin can be heard to good advantage. In order to get Der Zigeunerbaron onto a single disc there is quite a bit of trimming of the score as recorded;
Nikolaus Harnoncourt's complete 1994 recording for Teldec runs nearly twice as long, although that is admittedly extreme -- about 95 minutes seems the norm, and this runs only 78. Throughout Der Zigeunerbaron, the
Festival Orchestra Mörbisch, under
Rudolph Bibl, maintain a nice rhythmic energy and good sense of color. The recorded sound is clear, direct, and immediate. The booklet contains no more than a summary of the plot in English.
While there is no shortage of recordings of Der Zigeunerbaron, not very many of them are in digital sound, and if one is looking for no more than a single-disc representation of the score, then this Oehms Classics release is probably the only digital one in this format. But on the basis of the performance alone, it's recommended that you save your money for either
Harnoncourt,
Heinrich Hollreiser on EMI, or if you can stand mono sound, the truly great
Otto Ackermann recording made in 1954 with
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf in the critical role of Saffi.