Richard Tauber: Operetta Arias (Rec 1921-1932)

From his earliest career in opera, and for more than two decades to his last, protracted association with his own Old Chelsea from 1943 onwards, Richard Tauber and operetta were inextricably linked. Indeed to this day, with editions of his recordings on LP and of his films on video in mind, that affinity has been repeatedly reaffirmed, the unflagging demand for Tauber software bearing overall testament to his essentially Viennese, operetta-orientated personality, optimistic, outgoing and exuberant, yet unassailable in its musicality. An excellent pianist, Tauber was an even better, if largely frustrated, conductor, while as a singer of classical music, a specialist in Mozart opera and German lieder, he remains a model unsurpassed.

In a typical Tauber concert programme of the 1930s Mozart and operetta were given equal billing, with the inevitable Lehár Dein ist mein ganzes Herz because his audiences expected it. During his midlife the tenor was based in London where he won fame both on stage and on screen through a small clutch of operetta-style cult films, while scores of best-selling titles from operetta, shows and films recorded for Parlophone established him in popular perception as the quintessential 'romantic' tenor, rivalled only by Gigli and McCormack in their own respective spheres.

Richard Denemy Tauber was born out of wedlock to theatrical parents in the Austrian city of Linz on 16th May 1891. Although always interested in singing he at first showed no great inclination for it, and while his joint talents for piano and composition were nurtured at the Conservatory of Frankfurt-am-Main, his burning ambition was to become a conductor. Encouraged, however, by a period of vocal study with Heldentenor Karl Beines in Freiburg, in 1912 he was offered a contract by the Wiesbaden Theatre, of which his father was director, but opted instead for a further year's study with Beines. In March 1913 he made a more prestigious début at the Neues Stadt-Theater in Chemnitz, as Tamino in Die Zauberflöte and a few days later he sang Max in Der Freischütz, an opening which virtually overnight secured him a five-year contract with the Dresden Royal Opera.

Tauber was first contracted to Dresden from August 1913 to the end of July 1918, an association which would last, notwithstanding various contractual interruptions and appearances in opera and operetta at the Berlin (from 1919) and Vienna State Operas and elsewhere, until 1926. Soon renowned as that rare thing among tenors, a musician, he was ever in demand as a stand-in for indisposed colleagues and his (essentially lyric tenor) repertoire, over sixty operas by more than forty composers, was remarkable in its diversity. In 1915 he sang Bacchus in Strauss's Ariadne at 48 hours' notice, after one piano run-through with the composer, and by the time he made his earliest records (June 1919) critical acclaim throughout Europe and a reputation as a fast learner had preceded him.

Among tenors, the range of Tauber's operatic repertoire, albeit incompletely captured on shellac, remains legendary, and the same might be said of his association with operetta. During the early twentieth century, especially in Austria and other German-speaking centres, operetta ranked on a par with opera, and such Johann Strauss II staples as Die Fledermaus, Eine Nacht in Venedig, and Der Zigeunerbaron were already standard theatre repertory. Tauber first sang the last-named at the Vienna Volksoper in December 1920