I was particularly taken with the Mignon arias and with the “Il mio tesoro” (“Tröstet die heissgeliebte“), with its virile tone, perfectly poised sustained Fs followed by flashy runs, and such a loyal attachment to the Romantic downward portamento that it seems totally “in style.” And given the plangency and bite of the low and midrange as heard here, the Aïda Judgment Scene interview opposite the splendid Sabine Kalter takes a place (weird jump-cuts notwithstanding) alongside the Melchior/Arndt-Ober recording as best German-language version of the scene, despite our awareness of opera house reality. Finally among these operatic extracts, I must mention those from Die Tote Stadt. “Glück, das mir verblieb,” with Lotte Lehmann as Marietta and the very young George Szell conducting the Berliner Staatsoper orchestra, is simply one of the great opera singles, and while we’ve had it in fine sound on CD before, here it is followed by Paul’s “O Freund, ich werde sie nicht wiedersehen,” from the end of the opera, where Tauber repeats the refrain of Marietta’s Lied and sweeps up to the B-flat at full flood.

I have never really been a fan of Tauber’s Schubert recordings, for all their vocal beauties. But the other Lieder heard here—four by Richard Strauss and five by Grieg, in the German translations that were standard for non-Scandinavian singers, are surpassingly fine. The Strauss, with their wide compasses that need the operatically finished voice for full expression and their particular brand of sentiment that fits Tauber’s own so snugly, could hardly be better suited to him—listen to the blandishing “Freundliche Vision” or the feather-light Ständchen, capped by its rousing “Hoch glühn” at the close. And the Grieg songs seem to have had the effect of bringing Tauber down to a simpler, more straightforward expressive level than was his usual wont, though all the sophistication of technique is still at work on them. A puzzlingly ferocious voicing of the repeated “Ich liebe dich” in the translated Jeg elsker dig (Rosvaenge used to ruin phrases with this same weaponized “ie” vowel) is the only nit I can pick with these otherwise captivating renditions. I still look forward to hearing Tauber’s singing of two Loewe ballads, to which his storytelling instincts should be germane.

And so to the repertoire for which Tauber is most often remembered, that of the “Viennese” (AustroHungarian) operetta. The genre, along with its American offshoots (Victor Herbert, Rudolf Friml, Sigmund Romberg, the early Jerome Kern) has fallen as far into disuse as has that of the oratorio, and it’s sobering to contemplate the amount of paid work and professional advancement that the two together once generated for classically trained voices, not to mention their cultivation of a taste for such voices in the persuadable parts of the public. In the quarter-century following the Second World War, while productions of the shows (always with the exceptions of Die Fledermaus and Die Lustige Witwe) dwindled, the commercial record industry kept us well in touch with their music. The major companies put out rival complete recordings of the principal works of J. Strauss and Lehár. They, and less prestigious labels like Bruno, or Qualiton from Budapest—there was even an LP series called “Ritorno all’operetta”  from Vesuvius, featuring lightly credentialed Italian singers—offered highlights discs of those composers’ lesser scores, and those of Kalmán, Millöcker, von Suppé, Oscar Straus, and Leo Fall. International stars participated in these undertakings, and some made solo albums of operetta songs (to stick to tenors: Nicolai Gedda, Julius Patzak, Rudolf Schock, Sándor Kónya, Roberto Ilosfalvy, Fritz Wunderlich—all first-rate voices, their owners still with some feel, if only from childhood, for the culture that gave birth to these once-popular works.