Solti’s ‘Arabella’, London 1965

SOLTI’S ARABELLA AT COVENT GARDEN

Der Rosenkavalier was Georg Solti’s audition piece for the Musical Directorship
of Covent Garden in 1959. Once installed in 1961, he determined to expand
and refresh the Strauss repertory, and it was to become one of his strongest
suits during the latter part of his decade in the job. He returned to
Rosenkavalier with a new production in 1966 and again in 1968; he introduced
Frau ohne Schatten in 1967, reviving it in 1969 and twice more as a guest
during the 1970s; he conducted the old production of Elektra with Birgit
Nilsson in 1969, later a new production with Eva Marton in 1990; and lastly a
new Salome with Grace Bumbry in 1970. But first up was Arabella in 1965.
Solti had form with Arabella, having been brought in to conduct Decca’s 1957
recording with Lisa Della Casa and George London when Karl Böhm withdrew.
He was intent on bringing an authentic style to Covent Garden Opera’s first
production of an opera sometimes decried as a pale imitation of Rosenkavalier
on account of its Viennese setting. Rudolf Hartmann, Intendant of the
Bavarian State Opera and doyen of Strauss directors, who had worked with the
composer on his later operas, was invited to stage it in sumptuous decor by
the meticulous British theatre designer Peter Rice, which survived nine revivals
up until 1996, and which should never have been replaced. The original plan
had been to launch the production with the undisputed leading interpreters of
the day, Lisa Della Casa as Arabella and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau making his
Covent Garden debut as Mandryka, alongside an otherwise all-British cast who
would thereby absorb the style from such exemplary mentors; then, for it to
be revived the following season in an English translation with a native company
cast. But the initial series of seven performances in early 1965 was so
successful, that it was decided to retain the original language for the revival
and postpone it, in order to accommodate the irreplaceable Fischer-Dieskau,
to early 1967, when Joan Carlyle was promoted from Zdenka to the title role.
Those of us lucky enough to witness Fischer-Dieskau in his prime as Mandryka,
which I did at five of those performances in 1965 and two more in 1967, will
argue that seldom, if ever, has there been such a complete identification
between artist and role. Fischer-Dieskau simply was Mandryka. His own first
wife, the ‘cellist Irmgard Poppen, had died prematurely of eclampsia during
childbirth in 1963, so that his soft singing of the passage in Act 1 beginning ‘Das
ist ein Fall von andrer Art/ Es handelt sich für mich um etwas Heiliges’, or still
more his shy confession to Arabella in Act 2, ‘Ich habe eine Frau gehabt, sehr
schön, sehr engelsgut’, were almost unbearably poignant. At the same time,
his range of dynamics and expression encompassed command and tenderness,
pride and humility, anger and contrition. He constructed the whole of the
scene with Waldner in Act 1 as if it were an arc of a single paragraph. At one
performance, its impact was so overwhelming that, after ‘wann es wird
belieben’, the audience spontaneously applauded his exit.

The beautiful Swiss soprano Lisa Della Casa likewise identified with the coolly
elegant but inwardly vulnerable Arabella. She first sang Zdenka in 1946, after
which the Arabella Maria Cebotari recommended her to the next year’s
Salzburg Festival, where she sang alongside Maria Reining and Hans Hotter in
the presence of the composer, who presciently said ‘The little Della Casa will
one day be Arabella’. She played it for the first time in Munich in 1951, and it
became her signature role. Although she was an accomplished Mozartean and
performed Handel’s Cleopatra, Beethoven’s Marzelline, Wagner’s Eva and Elsa,
and some Puccini, it is for Strauss that she is primarily remembered. She sang
all three leading soprano roles in Rosenkavalier, including memorable
Marschallins with Solti at Covent Garden in 1968; Ariadne; Countess in
Capriccio; Chrysothemis; even Salome. No-one in my experience has matched
her recording of the Four Last Songs with Böhm; nor her supremely natural
Countess Madeleine one magical evening at Munich’s Cuvilliéstheater.
Della Casa’s partnership with Joan Carlyle in the Act 1 duet ‘Aber der Richtige’
is a highlight of this recording; and the local team rise to the occasion. Solti
and his orchestra cast a glow over proceedings. Listen to the sonic glamour of
the opening of Act 2, capped by Fischer-Dieskau’s ‘Das ist ein Engel, der vom
Himmel niedersteigt’; or to the tumultuous orchestral passage transitioning to
limpid poise for Della Casa’s descent of the staircase with the glass of water
before ‘Das war sehr gut, Mandryka, daß Sie noch nicht fortgegangen sind’.
These Arabellas mark the moment when Solti overcame his initial tribulations
at Covent Garden and entered his kingdom.

Nicholas Payne
9 September 2024

Richard Strauss (1864 – 1949)

Arabella

Track 1: Act 1

Track 2: Act 2

Track 3: Act 3

This recording was taken from a relay of a performance at the Royal Opera House on 6 February 1965.

The recording is in the Tolansky-Tschaikov Collection at Music Preserved

• Lisa Della Casa
  Arabella
• Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
  Mandryka
• Joan Carlyle
  Zdenka
• Josephine Veasey
  Adelaide
• Michael Langdon
  Count Waldner
• Alexander Young
  Matteo
• Kenneth Macdonald
  Count Elemer
• Delme Bryn-Jones
  Count Dominik
• Victor Godfrey
  Count Lamoral
• Judith Pierce
  Fortune-Teller
• Jenifer Eddy
  Fiakermili
• Chorus of the Covent Garden Opera
  
• Orchestra of the Covent Garden Opera
  
• Georg Solti
  Conductor