Giovaccino Forzano's libretto for Sly (originally written for Puccini) uses the 'Induction' to Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew only as a starting-point. That comedy of come-uppance (the rowdy drunkard Christopher Sly, carried to a rich man's palace during his alcoholic slumbers, is induced to believe the palace his own) is expanded to something close to tragedy. This Sly is a poet, who drinks to forget his poverty and his loneliness. He truly loves the tavern hostess whom his tormentors pass off as his 'wife', and when he realises the truth he despairs and kills himself, only learning as he dies that the hostess loves him.
It was a subject that accorded well with Wolf-Ferrari's grim mood after the First World War, in which Italy and Germany, his two fatherlands, were on opposite sides. It was not, however, much to the taste of the post-war world, and although Wolf-Ferrari's comic operas have retained at least a foothold in the repertory, Sly fell from it almost immediately and has rarely been revived.
This performance is far from perfect, and it is sung in German (no English translation is provided; the German text does not always correspond to what is sung), but it puts a convincing case for regarding the work as one of Wolf-Ferrari's strongest scores. The culmination of the tragedy (almost the whole of Act 3 is given over to a poignantly eloquent monologue for Sly and a brief but moving duet with Dolly, the hostess) is most cunningly prepared by an Act 1 whose mocking joviality suggests that this will be a comedy after all, and by an Act 2 (the luxurious palace and its elaborate court ceremonials) that has the quality of a phantasmagoria. Sly's misery at the outcome is quite shocking, like a slap in the face. The music is oddly but appropriately eclectic, Verdi and verismo mingling with Wagner, Strauss and even, when the comedy becomes brutal, Kurt Weill.
Unfortunately, both principal singers are strenuously vehement in the extreme. Deborah Polaski's voice, as recorded here, could cut glass at 10 paces, and Hans-Dieter Bader rarely sings below a penetrating ff. The others are reliable; Robert Maxym's rather backwardly placed orchestra plays well, but in a dryish acoustic. Despite my reservations, there is a real theatricality to this reading (the recording, made in 1982, followed a series of staged performances) and the impression of Wolf-Ferrari making a painfully personal statement is very strong.'