Search - Alfred Berg, Franz Lehar, Ulf Schirmer :: Lehár: Das Land des Lächelns

An Also-Ran

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 11/09/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"From the glamorous cast pictures one can only imagine that a DVD of this production -- this audio set was taken from three live Munich performances in 2006 -- would have been worth seeing. But as an audio-only recording it comes down a bit short when compared to some of the classic recordings of this Lehár classic, e.g., those with Rene Kollo, Siegfried Jerusalem or, best of all, Fritz Wunderlich. Camilla Nylund, a beautiful Finnish soprano, sounds acidulous early on but gets better in the second act. Polish tenor Piotr Beczala is acceptable but no competition for the tenors already mentioned. He does come into his own with the show's hit song, 'Dein is mein ganzes Herz', but his performance still isn't as stirring as the classic Tauber versions or those of Josef Schmidt, Plácido Domingo or Rolando Villazón.



On the plus side there is the expert direction by conductor Ulf Schirmer and the playing of the Münchner Rundfunkorchester. They really shine in the two overtures, the Second Act ballet music and Mi's dance music with its exotic percussion effects.



There is no libretto, but an extensive synopsis is provided and this makes it fairly easy to follow the action. As this operetta has extensive spoken German dialog, there is a good deal of down time for non-German speakers.



Scott Morrison"