Richard Strauss - Die Frau ohne Schatten - Nilsson, Rysanek, Berry, King - Böhm 1977Performer: Birgit Nilsson, Leonie Rysanek, Ruth Hesse, James King, Walter Berry, Peter Wimberger, Ewald Aichberger, Gertrude Jahn, Hans Helm, Lorenzo Alvary, Murray Dickie, Lotte Rysanek
Conductor: Karl Böhm
Orchestra/Ensemble: Vienna State Opera Chorus, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Date of Recording: 1977
Venue: Live, Vienna State Opera House
If the cast occasionally sounds a little elderly, its unrivalled understanding of its collective task wins through by the end. Nilsson's Dyer's Wife is least worried by the passing years, and here she gives a performance of a role that demands a rich lower register as well as a gleaming top to set beside her Elektra and Salome, indeed at certain points surpass them in sheer involvement and moving utterance. Anyone who may have thought her a cold singer needs to hear her remorse when she realizes the anguish she has caused her husband, Barak, sung here—as it was a few years ago at Covent Garden—with sympathetic warmth and generous breadth by Walter Berry. He is not always quite secure in line or pitch, but who cares when he is so obviously singing from deep within himself. Leonie Rysanek has remained unrivalled as the Empress for some 30 years. Here, after an initial huskiness, she gives an interpretation of more depth and understanding than she did on the 1956 set, and soars to the heights with almost equal ease. Her two long solos explore to the full the character's agony of soul and growing selfrealization. As her Emperor, James King copes well with the role's awkward tessitura, but his tone is often on the dry side. --Arkivmusic
Find more details and listen to the tracks at Deutsche Grammophon and Arkivmusic
