Underrated Classical Music: Italian Opera in German

 I'd never listened to the Fricsay Rigoletto. Why? Because Verdi in German is as perverse as Freischutz in French - I realize that this was the way things were done until less than a lifetime ago, and better this way to be understood than not to perform at all, but opera so conspicuously of a particular culture sounds incomplete in any other language than the one which produced it. It's one thing in Mozart or Handel who were as pan-European as they were Austro-German, but Verdi IS Italy as much as Weber and Wagner are Germany. Perhaps Verdi works in French and Wagner in English, considering how close the language groups are and how affiliated they were to those cultures (remember, there was a time when Wagner thought about moving to upstate New York and his prize protege, Anton Seidl, very much did).

But this solidifies my impression that opera in the recorded era never had a conductor like Ferenc Fricsay, who could coach orchestra and singers not just to technical feats of supervirtuosity but to a level of characterization and personality that puts just about everybody in the shade. To have lost him in his late 40s was a cataclysm. Maybe de Sabata did but we have nearly no idea except in risible sound. Schock, Metternich, and Streich sing with more Italian style than many Italians, all three are simply magnificent, so is the orchestra, and the sound for 1949 is semi-miraculous. German and all, I wonder if there has ever been a Rigoletto like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2A0pX6XbLw&fbclid=IwAR0hZuVjn6GKzNr6DgCm5Mv_FqxS6ObybkZU0eWKYp8R9QFWLLLKTjVP268