Anyone storing up ideas for a parlor game of "What's the Silliest Opera Plot Ever Conceived?" should take note of
Strauss' 1927 collaboration with Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Die Ägyptische Helena. The plot picks up after Homer wisely lets things rest, with Menelaus' and Helen's ship ride home after the Trojan War. The story involves various potions for forgetting and remembering, and Menelaus' intent to kill Helen, which he never gets around to, although he does murder someone else, but it doesn't matter because the couple ends up happy by the finale. And who could forget an opera whose major character is The Omniscient Mussel? It's easy to see why the librettist originally conceived of it as a comedy, and perplexing that he decided to make it into a serious romantic opera. Not surprisingly, the libretto didn't elicit the composer's most sublime outpourings. There's a lot of lyrical meandering and there are many rapturous or anguished outbursts, but there's not much memorable or substantial for the listener to hang onto. It's hard to make all of this sound like anything meaningful or genuinely moving, and
Joseph Keilberth, leading the Bavarian State Opera Orchestra and Chorus, does his darndest, but to little ultimate effect. The set is valuable primarily as a record of
Leonie Rysanek's warm and radiant singing. The sound of the live 1956 performance is murky and distant, and the orchestra sometimes overpowers the voices.