Let me begin by looking on the positive side of things. Talvela is a gloriously rotund, relishing Osmin, brandishing his faintly ludicrous trappings of power with vocal assurance and fruity tone. He makes a welcome return to the Decca camp. Only his fellow Finn, Matti Salminen, on the Harnoncourt/Teldec version, presents a more menacing and equally characterful reading of the role. Talvela's Osmin finds his match in Kathleen Battle's bewitching Blonde. I like Battle's winning ways, her cheeky exposition of the text, her bright, wide-eyed delivery of her arias, while still preferring Lillian Watson's tougher reading for Harnoncourt. As Battle's partner, Heinz Zednik is as lively and fresh as all Pedrillos should be, and has a decent stab at the heroic ''Frisch zum Kampfe''. Then, Edita Gruberova hasn't been bettered, in technical terms, by any of her rivals as Constanze on record, even her own earlier self for Wallberg (Eurodisc 300 027, 1/82). She also has that touch of metal in her tone that gives her portrayal a dramatic bite, which should be part of Constanze's vocal make-up. But that same bite sometimes develops into a glare, even a yowl, as her slightly Slavonic timbre catches the microphone uncomfortably, and I hear little of the warmth and tenderness that should be felt in ''Traurigkeit''. I admire this Constanze rather than loving her. Both Yvonne Kenny (Harnoncourt) and Arleen Auger (Bohm/DG) give us more appealing portrayals and ones that are not much behind Gruberova's in technical assurance. In the case of Gosta Winbergh, the interpretation, for all its accomplishment, is a trifle faceless, and sometimes the runs of the second of his two arias worry him and us. He is no match for Peter Schreier, either for Bohm or Harnoncourt, in projecting Belmonte's dilemmas and his notes with real purpose, though some may find Winbergh's the more attractive voice as such.
Most problematic is Solti's conducting. It seems to vary from the stodgy and uninterested, as in Constanze's first two arias, to the hard-driven: the Pedrillo/Osmin duet is so fierce as to lose all its sense of fun (turn to Harnoncourt and you hear its charm, wit and point), while the end of the Act 2 quartet is rattled through unmercifully as is so much else in a score usually known for its charm and breeziness. Nobody wants spineless Mozart—and the admirable Harnoncourt and experienced Bohm aren't short on histrionic elan—but here so much of the score is treated in a loveless and matter-of-fact way, unhelped by what sounds like an over-large contingent of the Vienna Philharmonic. If, in fact, the numbers are not so great as I imagine, then it must be the big-scale Decca recording that makes them so. May be the Harnoncourt set, and recent experience of Mozart on period instruments, is beginning to alienate us from the conventional, international-opera-house Mozart encountered here. No question, if you caught this performance at the Vienna State Opera, you would think it was having one of its better evenings, but I don't find here any particular sense of a consistent view of the work; rather a getting-together of a conductor and cast for a recording that doesn't surpass any of the three performances listed in that respect.
I haven't mentioned the Pasha Selim; he speaks clearly and with feeling, but the voice sounds a shade old for the part. The dialogue, foreshortened in the good cause of putting the work on to two records, one less than any of its rivals (the unsatisfactory Wallberg/Eurodisc apart). That economy may persuade those without this opera in their collection to investigate the set; so may my enthusiasm for at least three of the singers.
In November 1985 I retailed just why I found the Harnoncourt version so enlivening, not least on account of the fruit of his researches into the original instrumentation. Then his smaller orchestra is much more naturally balanced with the voices—both are more forward than on Decca—and the dialogue seems spoken with much more sense of stage action. I find little in the new set to shake my recommendation. If Harnoncourt seems to you to stray too far from the orthodox, you could choose Bohm or Davis (Philips), both admirable performances, but you would be denying yourself the chance to hear this delightful yet quite deep comedy as it is wholly rethought on Teldec, of which an excellent CD version (unfortunately spread over three discs—CD 8 35673) is now available.'