CD transfers from the annual festival of Radio France at Montpellier have been helping fill the void in new studio opera recordings, and versions of Johann Strauss’s sturdiest operetta score are not so plentiful that one should turn up a nose at this latest offering. The singers derive from various parts of the globe – Uzbekistan, Serbia and Korea as well as Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Hungary and Poland – but most seem to have found a particular home for their talents around the opera houses of France.

The major exception is the baritone Rudolf Wasserlof in the key role of the pig farmer Kálmán Zsupán. Viennese-born Wasserlof has almost half a century of experience in operetta and musicals in Vienna, and for over 30 years has been a member of the Vienna Volksoper company – but mostly in supporting character parts. So the cast is one that one can imagine attracting audiences to a French festival. But is it really distinguished enough to challenge in a recording field where Schwarzkopf, Gedda, Kunz and Ackermann long ago laid down the standard.

Armin Jordan gets things off to a promising start with an overture that unfolds easily and naturally. His is a sturdy, if perhaps unexciting, interpretation. The chorus proves its formidable numerical strength, if sounding somewhat static. Among the male soloists, Zoran Todorovich is outstanding – a striking Sándor Barinkay, with ringing high notes and clear enunciation. It’s a pity he spurns the variant refrain to the second verse of his entrance song (‘Ja, Changeur und Jongleur’). As for Wasserlof, he proves his Viennese pedigree with a character performance in the true Kunz mould. For him this seems to have been the opportunity of a lifetime splendidly taken. Of the others, Martin Homrich is a pleasant Ottokar and Paul Kong a worthy Carnero; but in Act 2 Béla Perencz seems stretched by the acrobatic demands of Homonay’s csárdás.

The major problem, though, is with the ladies. Ewa Wolak hits the notes OK; but her singing is a mixture of aplomb and a plum – a plumminess that never enables her words to be clearly made out. Jeannette Fischer is tentative as Arsena in Act 1, though lively enough in her Act 3 solo. Natalia Ushakova produces ringing high notes in the Act 1 finale; but her gypsy song lacks the necessary flexibility and ends unpleasantly flat, while her contribution to the Act 2 love duet lacks both charm and vocal security.

As is to be expected in a live recording, ensemble is not always as secure as it might be. Unsurprising also is the omission of dialogue, though this hardly helps the performance capture any real sense of drama or atmosphere. Less excusable for a concert performance is the omission of several numbers. Indeed, apart from Arsena’s Act 3 solo, this recording offers no more music than did that EMI two-LP recording of 50 years ago.

In performance terms that 1954 EMI recording outclasses this newcomer at every turn. If alternatively one wants more modern sound and more of the score, one can turn equally advantageously to either the almost complete EMI Boskovsky (7/88, nla) or the Teldec Harnoncourt, whose particular strength (but also its weakness) lies in an exceptionally extended text that restores a quarter of an hour of unpublished music.