Great Delivery Sad Packaging

The fine performances contained herein are let down by sub-standard packaging.

Composer: Lehár
Repertoire: Schön ist die Welt
Artists: Elena Mosuc, Zoran Todorovich, Munich Radio Orchestra/Ulf Schirmer

Rating: 3/5

Genre: Opera

Label: CPO 777 055-2

Schön ist die Welt (‘The World is Beautiful’), first produced in 1930, was a revision of an earlier operetta called Endlich Allein (‘Alone at Last’). The plot is the usual Ruritanian nonsense: a prince and princess, intended for each other in a marriage of convenience, fall in love without either realising the identity of the other. What makes it unusual is that the middle act features just the two of them, benighted on a mountain top. Schirmer serves up the waltzes with élan, Todorovich makes a very acceptable Richard Tauber substitute and Mosuc is a spirited princess. There’s no libretto, however, nor even a track-list and the booklet article was evidently fed through the automatic translation facility of a computer.