Imre Kálmán's Die Csárdásfürstin (The Gypsy Princess) is one of the pinnacles of Viennese operetta and perhaps the only major entry in the genre to debut in the midst of World War I. References to the outside conflict within Die Csárdásfürstin are subtle, but pregnant with meaning. If
Richard Strauss' Die Rosenkavalier represents the glory of Old Vienna on the eve of her dismantling, Die Csárdásfürstin is the sound of her subsequent collapse in progress. Yet a 1999 production of Die Csárdásfürstin held by the Semper Opera in Dresden that resettled the action into the very trenches of the war was roundly condemned by critics and public alike. Without regard to the serious undertone of the work, its tragic charm, sweet waltzes, and exciting pseudo-Hungarian dances are what sell the tickets still when Die Csárdásfürstin is advertised on the marquee.
Yvonne Kenny, Michael Roider, and the Slovak Philharmonic Choir Radio Symphony Orchestra under legendary operetta specialist
Richard Bonynge combine their efforts in this Naxos release of Die Csárdásfürstin with the intention of delivering the goods as promised. The singing all around is very good, and the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra pulls through this bouncy and deceptively difficult score admirably, though it occasionally shows signs of being winded and weary at the ends of particularly long scenes.
Complete recordings of Die Csárdásfürstin are not exactly thick on the ground, at least in non-German speaking countries. In the CD era it is possible with some trimming to squeeze a representative Die Csárdásfürstin onto a single disc. Here, Naxos has decided to put away the trimming shears and instead bring in some rare music from other never-heard Kálmán stage productions at the end of the second disc. These little filler pieces, taken from works ranging from 1917 to 1932, are completely charming and add considerable value to the two-disc set as a whole. Naxos cuts an additional corner by making the libretto accessible on its website, rather than adding extra pages to the booklet to accommodate it.