War-time Boehm MacBeth ??

What is this 'wartime' Boehm MacBeth I read about in 'Rough guide to opera'? It's apparently very intense. Other that, this is the first time I've heard of Boehm do Verdi. No details of the cast.

What other works are instense due to the war-time predicament?

There's another Boehm Macbeth from 1970 with Sherrill Milnes and Christa Ludwig.

That Rough Guide is pretty good, isn't it?

See http://uk.towerrecords.com/product.asp?pfid=2482518 for details.

There's also a Boehm Otello from around the same time with Ralf, Schoeffler and the less bad of the Konetzni sisters (and a later Macbeth with Christa Ludwig).

I wouldn't be surprised if Böhm conducted quite a lot of Verdi in various German opera houses during the first half of his career. He also conducted Otello at the Met fairly late in his career. I remember reading somewhere about Böhm combing NY record stores looking for a copy of the Toscanini recording, which he wanted to listen to while preparing the opera.

I've never heard the wartime Macbeth you mention, but I have heard a surprisingly effective live Böhm recording from circa 1970 with Christa Ludwig and Sherrill Milnes as Mr. and Mrs Macbeth. That's very late for Böhm, many of whose performances from that late in his career are soporific at best, but somebody must have given him a shot of adrenalin that night, because he's really and truly on. Ludwig is in fantastic voice and thoroughly involved in the proceedings, while Milnes is in best youthful form with plenty of generous tone to spare. He's not an unduly subtle Macbeth, but he doesn't do anything offensive, either. In fact, he's pretty exciting.

-david gable

Speaking of shots, it really sounds like Christa took a B-12 booster, doesn't it. Apparently, it's something some singers did from time to time to really rev themselves up before a performance, and she really sounds it, especially at the end of the first act, which is demented by any account.

says...

Boehm was weirdly inconsistent. Generally, your earlier-is-better rule applies to his studio recordings if the VPO is involved. On the other hand, in the studio with Dresden he could be pretty exciting as late as 1970 (or whenever his DG Fidelio was recorded), while live with the VPO (or other orchestras) he could be too, even late in life: the VPO Mozart 39-41 he did on London shortly before he died, and the LSO 41/Tchaikovsky 4 around the same time, weren't even remotely like the boring Mozart he churned out for DG in the last two decades of his recording career - you would never know it was the same conductor (he's not to be sneezed at in that late film of Elektra with Rysanek either).

Glorious, isn't it?

-david gable