Strauss: Waldmeister. Andreja Zidaric, Sophia Keiler, and Riccarda Schönerstedt, sopranos; Regina Schörg and Anna-Katharina Tonauer, mezzo-sopranos; Matteo Ivan Rašić, Daniel Prohaska, and Caspar Krieger, tenors; Robert Meyer, Daniel Gutmann, and Alexander Paul Findewirth, baritones; Chorus of the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz and Orchestra of the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz conducted by Michael Brandstätter. CPO. $18.99.
What a well-performed mess. Not content with the opportunity to offer some of the rare modern-day performances of Johann Strauss Jr.’s penultimate operetta, Waldmeister, the management of the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz decided that this very tuneful but dramatically flawed work would be improved by changing its plot, rewriting its lyrics, altering its characters, making its premise into something different, and redoing its settings. What this new version by Josef E. Köpplinger ends up proving is that modern librettists can do just as poor a job of producing a coherent dramatic scenario for Waldmeister as original libretto creator Gustav Davis did.
Given the paucity of recordings of most of Strauss’ other theatrical works, the existence of this second recording of Waldmeister – the first, led by Dario Salvi, appeared five years ago – should probably be celebrated. And given the generally pleasant sound of all the principals’ voices and the bouncily upbeat chorus and orchestra led by Michael Brandstätter, it is hard not to like this CPO release despite its many underlying flaws. But there are so many of those that it is impossible not to regard the whole enterprise as a missed opportunity that quickly derails for anyone who did not happen to be in Vienna in April 2025, when the performances from which this live recording were made occurred.
That provenance is really the heart of what works and what does not work here. Waldmeister is a kind of Black Forest idyll, complete with prominent hunting horns, grafted onto a comedy of manners. Strauss himself, when evaluating the work after deciding that his early enthusiasm for the libretto had been misplaced, made clear where his interest lay: “Diese Dialekt-rolle ist der ganze Zauber dieser höchst mageren Handlung. Nehmen wir diese weg, so ist die ganze Geschichte des Waldmeisters nichts werth.” That is, “This dialect role is the whole magic of this very thin plot. If we take it out, then the entire story of the Waldmeister is worth nothing.” Strauss was referring to the Saxon dialect of a professor of botany named Erasmus Friedrich Müller – whose name means “miller” and whose manner of speaking and repeated confusion with an actual miller are supposed to provide a considerable amount of the operetta’s fun. But in today’s offend-nobody theatrical environment, the entire dialect role was eliminated for this production, and that in turn led to a cascade of decisions involving relocating the action, altering the spoken and sung words, switching character backgrounds and motivations, and much more. This turned Waldmeister, which was already a thematic mishmash, into a much bigger one – but the idea was that the audience attending the 2025 performances in Vienna would be offended, even horrified, perhaps even bored (which might be worse), if the original approach of Davis and Strauss had been honored.
Given the fact that CPO offers only some of the music and none of the dialogue of Waldmeister, the full extent of the emendations is not entirely clear, which may be just as well. Fluency in German is an absolute necessity for understanding what is being sung here, since no texts are provided and there is no link to an online Waldmeister libretto – and even if there were, it would have to be to the Köpplinger version, not the original, to allow listeners to follow along.
It is worth noting that Davis, coauthor of the libretto for Jabuka, the previous Strauss operetta, tried to make Waldmeister theatrically attractive by including elements of Strauss’ best stage work, Die Fledermaus, that had made it so successful: mistaken identity, an alcohol-fueled party and, yes, an important character speaking in not-always-perfect dialect (Prince Orlofsky in the earlier operetta). But Davis, like far too many librettists, over-complicated matters, creating a work whose many themes include the supposed discovery of a new form of Waldmeister (the plant known as woodruff in English), the overly strict morals of rural districts and their rulers, and the importance of brand-new technology such as photography (used here more extensively than W.S. Gilbert used the telephone in HMS Pinafore). The relocated and updated version of Waldmeister misses the point of nearly all of this.
However, it is important to recognize that Strauss here continued to take much the same approach that he had used since his first completed operetta, Indigo und die vierzig Räuber, in 1871: he strung together a slew of wonderful dance tunes (mostly waltzes in Waldmeister) and let them carry the plot along to the extent possible. As a result, even with the rewritten (and in several cases significantly truncated) arias heard in this recording, even with the 21st-century dislocation of dialogue and character development for the sake of political correctness, the music itself is simply wonderful to hear, and that will be sufficient reason for Strauss lovers to celebrate this release despite its many manifest flaws. In fairness, though, it should be pointed out that, as with his other operettas, Strauss extracted music from Waldmeister for concert presentation: his works Opp. 463-468 all come from this operetta. And while the stage context does represent their original reason for being, the pieces generally seem paler in the theatrical venue than they do when heard independently of their origin. So Strauss lovers may be just as happy – maybe even happier – to listen to the concert-hall versions of waltz, polka and march music from Waldmeister as they will be to hear the music as presented by the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz forces.
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