The Teatro Colón’s performance of Strauss’s Der Rosenakvalier was recorded on 20 September 1936, just two days prior to recording Wagner’s Parsifal. This is, undoubtedly, the earliest known live recording of Der Rosenkavalier and it is fascinating from several standpoints. Although the voices of Tiana Lemnitz and Alexander Kipnis are familiar to most operatic collectors, this is the only recording where they can be heard in their complete roles as Octavian and Ochs. This recording also gives us the opportunity to hear other well known singers, namely Germaine Hoerner, who otherwise made no commercial recordings. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this performance, however, is Fritz Busch’s compelling and delightfully idiosyncratic handling of the score, so temperamentally opposite to his conducting of Mozart in those vaunted Glyndebourne recordings from the same period. The only really unsatisfying feature of this performance is that it is so heavily cut in all three acts, about 30 minutes in all. The cuts range in size from a few bars to several pages, and one can only speculate as to why they might have been made. It should be mentioned, though, that the practice of making cuts in Der Rosenkavalier was customary at this time, even in German houses.

The details surrounding the recording of these 1936 Teatro Colón productions are, at best, sketchy. During the fall of 1936, four operas were recorded: Parsifal, Der Rosenkavalier, Lohengrin, and Der fliegende Holländer. No one is certain as to exactly why these recordings were made and why other operas during that season were not transcribed. What is certain is that these four operas are the earliest recordings emanating from the stage of the great Teatro Colón. The recordings were all made on sixteen-inch, aluminum-based, lacquer-coated discs, using two turntables running at approximately 33 rpm. I have been told that the recording equipment was located in the basement of the Colón and that three microphones were used, one above the orchestra, a second above the front of the stage, and a third over the rear of the stage.

The balance in this recording of Der Rosenkavalier favors the orchestra to a great degree, but the singers are almost always audible. Fortunately, the recording technician made very few adjustments in sound level during the performance. Consequently, there were only a few places where I needed to make sudden level compensations. The recording is not without flaw, however, and there are two serious lacunae that I must mention. For unknown reasons, the final ten bars of Act One and the final two bars of Act Two are missing from the recording. The technician simply aborted the recording process before the music had ended. In order to maintain continuity, I have inserted the appropriate music from a 1939 performance conducted by Artur Bodanzky. Another small flaw in the recording occurs during the changes from one side to another. At these points, there is about a quarter second of missing music, which made it impossible for me to join the sides seamlessly.

In remastering this recording, my first task was to eliminate as much surface noise as possible without compromising the sound on the original discs. This was accomplished by carefully cleaning the discs and by keeping them wet during play-back. I also found that using several different sizes of styli on different portions of the discs produced an enormous sonic improvement. I next attempted to remove many hundreds of clicks and pops which afflict this recording. CEDAR technology proved to be a tremendous help in this process, but many pops still had to be manually removed. Finally, while transferring each side I noticed some pitch instability due to slight speed fluctuation on the original discs. Throughout the remastering process, I made careful adjustments in speed in order to keep the pitch as constant as possible.

This recording of Der Rosenkavalier possesses remarkable sound for its time and one truly does have the feeling of actually being in a seat at the Colón. The next opera in this series that I plan to issue is Wagner’s Lohengrin, featuring Germaine Hoerner, Rene Maison, and Alexander Kipnis, with Fritz Busch conducting.