In what seems to have been her first major assignment in a major venue (she made her Vienna debut a month or two later) Lisa Della Casa sings Zdenka. She’s wonderful, with a fuller, more beautiful voice than is the norm for the part and a sure grasp of the spilling-over of teenage romantic emotions. And the Mandryka of this performance is Hans Hotter. I could put it that no better illustration could be found of the advantages and disadvantages of the bass-baritone or Heldenbariton voice type for this role, and that would be true enough, except that what it really illustrates is that voice type, though certainly important (I campaign constantly for its recognition), is less crucial than the artistic talent of the individual performer. Hotter is in good vocal condition here, with the instrument displaying its usual idiosyncratic mixture of imposing full-voice tone, deep-plush softer dynamics, and a looseness that sometimes slips over into raggedness and unpleasantly distorted vowels. But in this performance the positive elements far outweigh the negative, and are in the service of a particularly intense identification with his character. I know of few recorded passages that have as profound an eloquence as his recollection of the deceased former wife who was with him for only two years (“Ich habe eine Frau gehabt“), or in the whole continuance of that Act 2 scene, from the destined couple’s first moment of mutual recognition, marked by a wonderful sforzando chord, to the one where Arabella frees herself to dance her final waltzes as a Mädchen and bid farewell to her three beseeching Counts. Hotter also rises to heights in the jubilant final scene. With this, we get a number of well-struck high notes, along with many that are taken down. He chooses well, selecting those that are both the most meaningful and the most likely of success in his voice. But Strauss did not pen the notes because of an excessive supply of ink, and the rewrites aren’t what he intended. Hotter does not solve the Act 2 rant any more convincingly than others, except that his voice is less grating than most. It’s just not well written. Here, the act is also cut slightly short, at “Die Herrn und Damen sind einstweilen meine Gaste!“, for the sake of transition into Act 3 without intermission, though the complete Vorspiel to Act 3 is played. I’ll touch on this decision in a moment.

We move forward to 1950 in Berlin, to a performance I am reluctant to mention because I have just found my way to it, and have thus far listened to only Act 1. I might not even have bothered with it had I seen the lineup in advance, but my source did not list cast and conductor, and the sheer anonymity of it (Berlin Staatsoper, after all) piqued my curiosity. There is a good, well-controlled Arabella from a voice I didn’t seem to know; a splendidly pert and silvery-voiced Zdenka, also a mystery; a good Waldner and Adelaide I couldn’t name; and a really splendid Mandryka of the true-baritone sort. He at moments suggested Josef Metternich, whose voice I do know rather well, but having recently re-heard that Angel highlights disc, I put the thought aside—can’t be him. The performance as a whole was moving along well under the incognito maestro. The cast: Christel Goltz, just recently released from Hochsopran duties, as Arabella, a role I would not have identified with her; Anny Schlemm, still doing the light-soprano thing, and putting a keen point on every line of Zdenka’s; Heinrich Pflanzl and Carola Goerlich as the Waldners. And the Mandryka is indeed Metternich, who except for the general voice type and timbre is almost unrecognizable in the zest of his approach, along with the ease with which he conquers the tessitura with sound that is still sufficiently heroic. (I saw him as a ringing Kurwenal a few years later, though on the whole he did not fare very well at the Met.) Something about the role, live performance, and colleagues (I don’t know who the director was) brought out a lot from him that did not emerge from Walter Legge’s studio, with a rather pallid-sounding Schwarzkopf. The conductor is an unwontedly lively Joseph Keilberth. I cannot vouch for the remainder of the performance, but I certainly mean to hear it.