If you are collecting Zemlinsky's operas, and have already sampled the recent Koch-Schwann recording of his Kleider machen Leute (1/92), you can now compare it with another version of the same story. The opera by Joseph Suder is later (completed in 1934) and longer and if the obscurity of the composer's name doesn't prepare you for the sheer professionalism of the music, it might lead you to suspect anachronisms of style.
Of course late-romantic operas were being written in Germany in the 1930s, not least by Richard Strauss. But Suder (1892-1980), while never less than competent, is rarely inspired, and he adopts a post-Wagnerian, neo-Straussian idiom for a story (based on Gottfried Keller) which seems to cry out for music more in the tradition of Lortzing's Zar und Zimmermann than of Die Meistersinger or Der Rosenkavalier. ''Clothes make the man'' hinges on mistaken identity—a tailor taken for a nobleman because he is wearing his master's cloak—and the composer's own rather journeyman-like approach is especially evident in the early stages of the opera's two extended love scenes. Even so, only the choral double fugue that ends the fourth of the five acts is positively ponderous, and although the musical material is of generalized lushness with too little in the way of memorable motivic or melodic invention, it flows along attractively. For sampling Suder at his best, I recommend the first track of Act 4, where the world of Die Frau ohne Schatten, Arabella and even Capriccio is close at hand: and Suder has a nice line in quiet endings to otherwise impassioned scenes. Acts 1 and 5 both die away in affectingly understated fashion.
The flow of the work is helped by a uniformly strong and often sensitive performance. A bigger voice than Pamela Coburn's might have proved a more equal match for Klaus Konig, but she has a polished technique and much of the best music. Konig is good, and Morris Morgan is an excellent baritone, of whom I'm surprised not to have heard more. All the smaller parts are well but not excessively characterized. The efficient recording comes with a decent-sized booklet which actually includes biographies for the main singers, as well as a complete libretto and notes, though these have been poorly proof-read.'