INTRODUCTION BY H.C. ROBBINS LANDON

 

It is more than half a century ago - in 1951 - that I persuaded George Mendelssohn of Vox Records to record Haydn's Marionette Opera Philemon und Baucis, to be conducted by the supremely professional operatic conductor, Meinhard von Zallinger, an austere Austrian aristocrat who was then dividing his time between Munich  and Vienna.

 

The great Haydn scholar, Jens Peter Larsen, had just discovered the score of  Philemon und Baucis, hitherto believed, like all Haydn's marionette operas, to be lost, in Paris, so we celebrated this event by making a recording - the first Haydn German opera on L.P. We needed skilful actors and actresses to do the spoken parts, and we used mainly artists from the Vienna Burgtheater for these taxing parts. We also persuaded Vox to include with the L.P the complete German libretto, its first publication since 1773.

 

I think I may modestly say that our venture was a success artistically, and I welcome the reprint in 2003 to accompany the Eisenstadt Haydn Festival's resuscitation of the opera. It brings back fond memories of a time literally long ago and far away.

 

Domaine de Foncoussières                                
February 2003