Thanks to the Swiss Relief company the international baritone’s opera and ‘Yugoslavian’ song recordings are now -for the first time ever- available on CD.
His Winterreise cycle and Schubert songs were released by Symposium (CD 1098/1099) a couple of years ago and the Jewish Music Heritage Recordings company re-released the world premiere recording of Bloch’s Sacred Service (CD JMHR 015).
In the forties and fifties Rothmueller was a sort of Jewish Tito Gobbi sharing the same feeling for musicality, the same stage presence and even the same repertoire and in a way there’s even a similarity in timbre.
Rothmueller Croation by birth (1908) died in Bloomington in 1993.
Besides being a feted opera singer he also studied composition and even wrote an interesting treatise on Jewish music. His son Daniel is a noted cellist.
The present CD includes the HMV recordings of Zauberflote, Cosi, Tahnnhauser, Chenier, Tosca and Rigoletto. In addition there’s an acetate disc recording of Germont’s aria and the aforementioned folk songs which date from a live Radio Zurich broadcast in 1946.
Included as well is his Toreador song from a 1949 movie under Krips which featured Maria Cebotari as Carmen. As a bonus you get a more than decent rendering of Tosca’s vissi d’arte by soprano Franca Sacchi.
The Rothmueller voice is a very personal voice, full of artistry paired with an overall excellent enunciation. Yet the voice may not be to everyone’s liking either as just as in the case of Gobbi’s it has an intruding nasal edge to it but he sings with an endearing sense of character.
A most welcome -historically very important- CD release by an enterprising company.
The Relief company features recordings by Joseph Schmidt, loads of Toscanini, a Contes d’Hoffman with Rudolf Schock and Welitsch and a live Bergonzi recital from Zurich amongst other non-vocal releases.
You can buy this CD from: www.jpc.de
PS
Marko Rothmuller can also be heard on several live CD’s. Available are/were(?)
- Un Ballo w. Bjorling-Morris, cond. Herbert (CD VAI)
- Forza, w. Poleri, Wegner, cond. Busch (CD Andromeda)
- Salome w. Cebotari-Hoengen, Friedrich, cond. Krauss (CD Legato Classics/ Gebhardt)
- Die Verkaufte Braut w. Tauber, Konetzni, Cond. Beecham (CD SRO)
- Il Tabarro excerpts w. di Stefano, cond. Ackerman (CD Vocal archives)
- Cosi w. Jurinac, Lewis, cond. Busch (CD Guild historical)
