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Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Lehar: Giuditta
Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:
While Franz Lehar's Giuditta is technically an operetta, it was nevertheless his closest approach to serious opera. The story of Giuditta is romantic, not comic, and it has a sad ending. It traces the rise of a femme fatale from simple country girl to bigtime whore and exotic dancer. The beautiful Giuditta breaks men's hearts along the way. First staged in 1934, this operetta represents the last gasp for the genre of sentimental Viennese operetta.
On August 16, 1987 I broadcast an old mono LP recording of this work. Rudolf Moralt was conducting the forces of th3e Vienna State Opera. Soprano Hilde Gueden was Giuditta. Then a year later on Sunday, August 21, 1988 I presented a much more recent EMI stereo recording from 1985 that has got to be the definitive one. Edda Moser is a stunning Giuditta, and opposite her tenor Nicolai Gedda can rightly be said to be the only other tenor after Rudolf Schock to even approximate the star quality of Richard Tauber, Lehar's own chosen tenor lead. Tauber sang in the premiere production with the composer conducting.
In 1934 Willi Boskovsky played first desk violin under Lehar's hand at the Vienna State Opera. In the 1984 studio taping of Giuditta it's Boskovsky leading the Munich Radio Orchestra and Munich Concert Choir. That same EMI LP release I drew upon again in August of 1995, 2003 and 2010. You get to hear it yet again this Sunday in its 2013 EMI Electrola Collection compact disc reincarnation.