It’s gratifying to find CPO looking beyond Lehár for 20th-century Viennese operettas. Hard on the heels of Oskar Nedbal’s admirable Die Winzerbraut, CPO now offers this work by Leo Fall, who shared in the international success of Viennese operetta in the early 1900s but has since fallen unjustifiably into the shadow of Lehár and Kálmán. Operetta connoisseurs rate him highly – not least for his quirkily individual word-setting and the chamber textures of his orchestration. Though Fall’s major international success was perhaps with Die Dollarprinzessin and Madame Pompadour, Der fidele Bauer has remained popular in German-speaking countries. It tells of tensions that arise when a young man of peasant stock leaves his humble upbringing to study at university in Vienna, becomes a professor and then contracts a marriage into a higher social class. As for the score, rustic melodies alternate with rousing student choruses, and elegantly phrased arias with elaborately worked-out ensembles. The major tenor solos have proved rewarding material for the likes of Wunderlich and Domingo.

One may not get the same level of sophisticated vocalisation here but the performance from the 2010 Bad Ischl Festival is of a high standard and offers a proper sense of a genuine Viennese operetta ensemble. Principal honours are shared between tenors Eugene Amesmann and Robert Maszl, sopranos Romana Noack and Laura Scherwitzl, and comic baritone Franz Suhrada. This is, though, a stage performance for a German-speaking audience, and English-speaking listeners should be warned that there’s lots of German dialect and no accompanying libretto or translation.

The curious omission of the vocal part of the introductory number is balanced by two interpolations. The first of these is an overture that Fall arranged on themes from operettas by Offenbach, Strauss, Millöcker and Sullivan, the second a beautiful number from Korngold’s Fall completion Rosen aus Florida. Both are treasurable in themselves but incongruous here. One may thus get a more authentic version in a 1954 radio production on Cantus‑Line (nla) but operetta lovers should enjoy hearing Fall’s rewarding score in the superior sound quality here.