Two weeks ago I promised a few words on Luise Helletsgruber, the Elvira both here and in the ’37 Salzburg performance. She was a favorite in Mozart roles in those years, so I gather there must have been more to her performing than we can glean from the bright, intermittently supported, and rattlingly vibratoed tone we hear on her recordings. In Salzburg, as at the Met with Novotnà, the “Mi tradì” was omitted. They simply didn’t know what to do with it, I think. ^(I) Helletsgruber has some nice inflections along the way, and then, over an accompaniment by Busch that captures everything in her train of thought and feeling, sings the recit eloquently. The aria, though, proves a bit beyond her command.The Hungarian tenor Koloman von Pataky has a timbre that is warm and generous, if at times overly open, but has a painfully polite approach and an unpersuasive way of solving the downward runs near the end of “Il mio tesoro.” The other members of this cast do no more than stay afloat at a professionally respectable level, though Roy Henderson, the Masetto, at least has an interpretation of “Ho capito” (a rather implausible one, suggesting a sophisticated ironist—but at least an interpretation).

In its day, this carefully prepared performance under a master conductor, based on well-rehearsed repetitions in live performance but less starrily cast than the Walter-led Met and Salzburg productions, was admired primarily for its ensemble virtues. Re-hearing it though, after years of conditioning by more recent efforts, I am struck by the confidence and individuality of its principals, and by the overall impression of artists not seeking to consciously re-discover a masterwork, but simply to perform it. I think that if you listen to it with stylistically open ears, you will find reward.

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N.B.: I would like to call your attention to an absorbing series of musical explorations posted by a colleague and friend from way back, Kenneth Furie. Ken and I worked together for years at High Fidelity, and he later wrote a column on opera for Keynote (the excellent program magazine of Station WNCN in NYC, edited by Sedgwick Clark) that included some of the most trenchant commentary on the operatic scene of the ’80s. Ken’s Sunday posts, which originated with Down With Tyranny.com and now comprise a considerable archive, go into selected musical examples in close detail, with multiple embedded clips for comparisons on the sharp and often unusual insights Ken always has. He alerted me to his July 1 piece partly because it alludes to some remarks I made on singing back in ’67, but the post is largely devoted to comparisons of approaches to Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin in its many arrangements, along with comment on lessons in musicality from an oboe masterclass taught by Albrecht Meyer. The range of Ken’s musical enthusiasms is wide, and he’s a sprightly writer, besides. Here’s the route (over):