released December 17, 2023

A ‘potted’ Fledermaus

For Christmas 1950 the Metropolitan Opera, New York, presented a new production of Johann Strauss II’s popular operetta ‘Die Fledermaus’. At this time most of the leading members of the original cast had exclusive recording contracts with one or other of the two major American recording organisations, RCA Victor and Columbia-USA. This meant that a recording with the full cast of the new production was impossible. Columbia-USA decided to record the work complete under the conductor of the first night, Eugene Ormandy. It’s cast included Ljuba Welitsch and Richard Tucker, both members of the Met’s first cast, which sang the work in the Met’s own English translation.

Columbia-USA’s bigger rival, RCA-Victor, decided by contrast to record a potted version, marketed as ‘Highiights’, in which the operetta was boiled down to approximately sixty minutes’ length. This reflected RCA’s tendency at the time, following the introduction of the long-playing record, to issue highlights on a single disc rather than complete recordings of operas. Its version included all the major musical items of the work, but in a truncated form, hence reference to the recording here as ‘potted’.

RCA’s cast included from the first night Met cast Patrice Munsel as Adele, Risë Stevens as Orlofsky, and Hugh Thompson as Frank. To these were added two major stars from RCA’s current roster: Jan Peerce as Alfred and Robert Merrill as Falke, neither of whom ever sang these roles at the Met. Also participating were Regina Resnik as Rosalinda and James Melton as Eisenstein. Resnik sang Rosalinda at the Met from 1951 onwards, before moving across to Orlofsky in 1958, a role which she famously characterised in an uniquely individual way at the famous 1972 Gala in honour of Sir Rudolf Bing. Unable to use the Met translation, RCA used instead a version by Ruth and Thomas Martin.

RCA’s master-stroke however was to give conducting duties to Fritz Reiner, whose command of the Viennese style, vigour and humour make it one of his most interesting recordings. The result is a Fledermaus ‘lite’: a highly characterised account of this immortal work but truncated, hence 'potted'. This recording maintained a rather shadowy life on long-playing record, but vanished almost completely in the CD era apart from appearances on the American private CD labels, Idlewild Classics and Premiere Opera.

Happy Christmas!

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