If ever one wanted to call this opera ''Baron Ochs'' this would be the occasion for, more than any of the other artists, Kurt Moll commands the stage and his role. This video production allows us to see every one of his many facial expressions—the range at the moment in Act 3 when Ochs finally sees through the Octavian/Mariandl deception and also fathoms the relationships is truly extraordinary and absolutely in character. Throughout Moll is Ochs rather than a bass giving a comic performance, right in voice, accent (Viennese) and vocal depth. Indeed, with a compass suited perfectly to the part and an ideally rotund timbre, one could not hope to hear Ochs better sung or interpreted, especially as Moll entirely avoids caricature. In most respects he is superior to Jungwirth, good though he is, on the legendary Carlos Kleiber version.
Anna Tomowa-Sintow was in her prime when this performance was taken off the stage in Salzburg during the 1984 Festival, and her singing is warm, vibrant and finely shaped. Her reading is natural and dignified, but a shade under-characterized both in vocal and verbal terms. Few may want the underlining of the role of some earlier interpreters but something a little more idiomatically Austrian, more mercurial, is called for, and might have been forthcoming with stronger stage direction than Karajan himself provides here. In compensation there is a wonderful expression of sadness and resignation in Act 3.
Agnes Baltsa's rather hangdog Octavian, wanting much of the fervour and youthful exuberance of Fassbaender for Kleiber, is more of a liability. Her tone is as ever tangy in a resinous kind of way, far from ideal for Strauss. With Perry's pretty, prettily sung but anonymous Sophie also inclined to edginess, the traditional Straussian roundness of sound is missing in the Sophie/Octavian duets. All the smaller roles are adequately cast with many well-routined singers, Hornik a properly fussy, preening Faninal. The young Kurt Rydl, to be Haitink's Ochs (EMI, 9/91), is heard to advantage as the Police commissioner.
As happened in his later years, Karajan's conducting is wondrous in texture, luminous, sumptuous where necessary, but wanting in dramatic point and in Schwung, just the characteristics that inform Kleiber's ebullient reading. It is also at times desperately slow, though not quite so much so as on the CD set made in Vienna with almost the same cast in 1982 (DG, 9/84).
Teo Otto's traditional sets date from 1960, serving Karajan's interpretation well enough, their spaciousness well caught on screen, but the conductor's direction looks woefully stiff beside that of Schenk on the DG version which, Ochs apart, must remain the recommendation in this field. As with all Sony opera sets, no subtitles are provided for Teletext owners—a drawback in this piece.'