Notwithstanding a starry cast, this brightly lit reissue is Solti’s show, shared with a Vienna Philharmonic at the top of its form. His is a weighty, Straussian performance that takes seriously a work often relegated to the “children’s opera” category. Which is to say that while rival versions may offer more charm, often to the work’s detriment, Solti revels in its multitude of orchestral colors, aided by engineering that vividly reproduces the orchestral contributions so the deep brass ring out with authority and the strings, especially the warm cellos, sing with both delicacy and strength.
The singing, with the possible exception of Julia Hamari’s thin-toned, sometimes shrill Mother, is uniformly excellent. Lucia Popp’s Gretel is just plain wonderful, her silvery voice a joy to hear in every scene she graces. Brigitte Fassbaender, the mezzo Hänsel, is almost at her level, if a more mature character than usual. At times, especially with Solti’s Straussian approach, Act 2’s closing numbers sound like Octavian and Sophie dueting in Rosenkavalier. Walter Berry may be the best Father on disc, warmly sung, well-characterized. His entrance song is delightful and he invests the Father’s worry about the lost children with convincing dread. In the cameo roles, Norma Burrowes is a lovely Sandman and Edita Gruberova’s gleaming top makes the Dew Fairy’s turn a worthy coloratura display.
That leaves the villainess, Anny Schlemm, whose wicked witch is broadly done, even if she doesn’t display the over-the-top screeching we sometimes get. She’s aided–or subverted, depending on your tastes–by engineering trickery that adds echoes to her whoops and lends a not-inappropriate Disney touch to her hocus-pocus scene. This 1978 recording was made at a time when Decca was fond of simulating stage effects, so when Mother knocks over the jug of milk in Act 1 it sounds as if she’s smashed a picture window. The slim booklet has a track-by-track synopsis; the text is embedded in the first of the two discs and accessed via your computer, an awkward arrangement Decca uses to screw up many of its recent vocal reissues. [2/21/2003]
