In 1964 Deutsche Oper Berlin still had no General Music Director. But Artistic Director Gustav Rudolf Sellner made a virtue out a necessity and – in addition to the permanent conductor Heinrich Hollreiser and the regular guest conductor Karl Böhm – brought in further conductors from home and abroad for individual productions. For “Don Carlos” he invited Wolfgang Sawallisch, who since 1957 had been making a name for himself at the Bayreuth Festival, above all with “Tannhäuser” and the “Flying Dutchman” and since 1960 had been acting General Music Director in Hamburg. He had at his disposal an ensemble of outstanding soloists. In addition to Josef Greindl and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, they included James King in the title role, Pilar Lorengar, Martti Talvela, Patricia Johnson and Lisa Otto as the Voice from Heaven. Sung in German.
200000 Taler
Boris Blacher was one of the most important and most widely performed composers in post-war Germany. In his 1969 opera “200 000 Taler” (200 000 Thalers) he adapted a comedy by famed and popular Jewish author Scholom Aleichem and created a sophisticated milieu study around tailor Schimele Soroker and his family who come to great fortune by winning the lottery.
This 1970 recording of the world premiere production stars a stunning Martha Mödl as Soroker’s wife and Günter Reich in the role of the shrewd tailor. Director Gustav Rudolf Sellner leads his fine cast meticulously through the comic and self-ironic material and supports the cliché-less score that Blacher conceived for Aleichem’s characters. Heinrich Hollreiser conducts the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin with insight and musical mastery. As the Neue Zürcher Zeitung wrote after the premiere, “Blacher discovers forces and notions that move our century within the naive, unpretentious literary material at hand. … Without ever using Jewish melodies this score creates a kind of folklore of a setting that is fully Blacher’s own. Here lives a new style.
Die heimliche Ehe
Staged by Gustav Rudolf Sellner, conducted by Lorin Maazel, with costumes by Filippo Sanjust and performed by the six soloists with consummate vocal elegance, Cimarosa’s “Die heimliche Ehe” (Il matrimonio segreto / The Secret Marriage) offers unalloyed pleasure, triggering a kind of ecstasy with ist combination of delicacy and opulence and ist refined humour. It brings out Cimarosa’s musical mastery – but also the visual impact of the opera. Sung in German.