The big attractions of the performance, apart from its generally authentic look, are della Casa, now as Arabella, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, the Mandryka. Della Casa took almost total possession of this part along the Munich/Salzburg/Vienna circuit, as well as at the Met, in the ’50s and early ’60s, and is still in her prime here. Her lovely timbre, full enough but always held on a leash to carve the long legato line and grade the dynamics, her captivating face and grace of movement, her easy charm and sophistication of manner, add up to a nearly ideal Arabella. Both Winthrop Sargent, writing of her Arabella in Vienna early this same year, and Harold Rosenthal, reviewing the Munich production in Opera, complained that she had become too fussy a performer, and it’s true that there are some moments of coy posing that detract, but only momentarily. As I watched her here, I was thinking most of the time how much I’d missed of her as an actress at opera house distance. There are few opera singers of whom that can be said. Before seeing this video, I would not have supposed Fischer-Dieskau to be really equipped for the part of Mandryka. I saw him often between 1955 and 1970, but always in recital or concert—he never sang at the Met—and from the video productions I’d seen, I did not account him a very convincing actor. I also would have imagined him picking apart many of his utterances; he could be as fussy a vocal actor as Wechsberg and Rosenthal found Della Casa to be physically, and I don’t respond well to that. I’ve never heard the DGG release of this production, recorded three years later but, David Hamilton tells us, with the identical cast. It might not have done more than shade my opinion. He’s able to plump up his lower range to a suave bass-baritone color without paying any cost, and can access an unlabored top, but with tone that is light and rather bland in timbre. So he is neither a heroic-sounding low baritone like London or Hotter, nor a balanced, equalized higher baritone with some richness of tone like Reinmar or Metternich. But I was carried away by his performance. He’s in his home house and native language, among compatriots with whom he has rapport, including some of what we call “chemistry” with Della Casa—that sforzando moment between them could be from one of the great cinema romances of the ’30s. His always-keen musical understanding is grounded in an instinct for this role, and his physical acting has energy and clarity of action. Above all is the freedom of emission in his singing. Despite the low-high discrepancy (and, as with Hotter, in defiance of voice-type categories) he sails through the music absolutely unimpeded, and that’s exhilarating.

After Gueden, Anneliese Rothenberger was the go-to Zdenka and Sophie at the Met and elsewhere. She takes the role here, musically and vocally to good effect. Like the young della Casa’s, her voice has more body, a more three-dimensional quality, than the run of the part, and yet needn’t sacrifice anything at the top in exchange. She performs with sincerity and commitment—no soubretting—but as with Alder at the Met is poorly costumed, with suspiciously feminine bulges protruding here and there. The two tenors do not add much. Georg Paskuda works his way through Matteo securely, but without much youthful ardor, and is that really Fritz Uhl, soon to take on leading Wagner roles, passing in and out as Elemer? Fortunately, the Waldners are in good hands with Ira Malaniuk and Karl Christian Kohn, the latter with a well-seated bass voice and a serious approach to the role that still registers the comic element but allows us to grasp Graf Theodor’s predicament. Keilberth is again the conductor. The orchestra is somewhat handicapped by the audio, but while his reading is more comfortable than galvanic, it isn’t slack. He conducted a lot of Strauss, and had a grasp on his language. As with the ’47 Salzburg recording, the intermissionless transition from Act 2 to Act 3 is used, the full Vorspiel is played, and cuts are taken both at the end of 2 and in the first part of 3. I have not made up my mind definitively on that idea, but I tend to favor intermissions (this isn’t a short piece, especially for a talky comedy) and the completion of forms and of story-telling, even where musically a little weak.