DESCRIPTION:
Benno Kusche, Bass-Baritone (1916-2010)
Gaetano Donizetti: DON PASQUALE
Duet Pasquale - Malatesta: "Cheti, cheti, immantinente" (sung in German)
with Hermann Prey, Baritone (1929-1998)
Conducted by Mario Rossi (Cologne 1959)

My personal opinion: The Freiburg born bass-baritone Benno Kusche was a national identification-figure. During his forty years at the Bavarian State Opera Munich, he had a very close down-to-earth connection with his country and his audience. Omnipresent in radio and TV of the 1960's, Kusche was a German institution - just like Rudolf Schock, who even wandered with ordinary like-minded-people through their homeland nature. They were one-of-us idols. These cozy times are long over. Seemingly there is no place for a sense of nationality in a motley world that abandons almost all of its traditions due to a policy of unlimited global thinking. Also Germany became a multicultural gathering place and lost so much of centuries-old cultur and spirit. But this is not the right place to discuss grievances, notwithstanding the fact that the survival of cultur highly depends on politics ...
Described as a bass-baritone, some say that Benno Kusche was a bass-buffo. For me, first and foremost, he was a singing character actor. Admittedly his voice was not a first-class instrument (sometimes unstable, slightly wobbly), but for music expert John B. Steane, Benno Kusche's Beckmesser in Wagner's DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG was "the most vivid on records: Snarling, malicious, ridiculous and always good at the funny hypocrisy of this figure", he wrote in 'The Grand Tradition'. The 1956 HMV production under Rudolf Kempe with Benno Kusche as the tricky town clerk is still a key recording, especially as Ferdinand Frantz gives a very human Sachs and Elisabeth Grümmer as Eva is a model of vocal culture and expression.
One of Kusche's signature roles was Leporello in DON GIOVANNI, a part he never recorded (the companies preferred more renowned international artists). Fortunately we have two live documents: A 1955 Cologne radio concert under Otto Klemperer and a 1962 Munich performance conducted by Joseph Keilberth - both with George London as the Don. Kusche's Leporello neither has the vocal power of Walter Berry nor the parlando verve of Fernando Corena or Giuseppe Taddei - and yet he brings to life the ambivalent character of this figure: Cheeky and even impertinent in "Madamina", spineless and scared in "O statua gentilissima".
Paradoxically Benno Kusche's voice was unattractive in an attractive way. Characterized by an odd gnarly timbre (a kind of raspy texture), the singer even gave comic figures a more in-depth background. He could emphasize certain words in a hilarious ironically way - a talent that made him a fine mercurial interpreter of two-faced characters like Mozart's Figaro, Papageno and Don Alfonso as well as Donizetti's DON PASQUALE, recorded live 1959 in Cologne under Mario Rossi with Hermann Prey as Malatesta. The German sung version of "Cheti, cheti, immantinente" has probably not the overwhelming flamboyance we know from Italian singers, nevertheless it is a recording I would prefer, compared, for example, to the crude Yevgeny Nesterenko / Bernd Weikl 1980 studio performance.
Many critics rate a singer only with regard to his operatic work, but we do not do justice to Kusche, if we ignore his numerous operetta productions. Simply unrivaled is his organ master Blasius Römer in a 1953 radio broadcast of SCHWARZWALDMÄDEL, conducted by Franz Marszalek. In this he sings a heart-warming duet with the lovely Gretl Schörg ("Erklingen zum Tanze die Geigen"). For Eurodisc (later RCA) he played Kálmán Zsupán in Strauss' ZIGEUNERBARON. One of his favorite operetta roles he recorded four times: Frank in DIE FLEDERMAUS (also his very last part at the Munich Opera House). He is imperious and hilarious as Jupiter in Willy Mattes 1978 recording of Offenbach's ORPHEUS (especially in the spoken dialog scenes), an arch-comedian in the fly-duet (with Anneliese Rothenberger far beyond her prime). His last HMV operetta was in 1980 LA BELLE HÉLÈNE. As the wary high priest Calchas, Kusche has some funny prosa, though his singing voice shows clear signs of aging. It should be added that the young Kusche also recorded popular songs on 78-rpm discs with Adalbert Luczkowski and his Orchestra. In melancholy I remember this pleasant artist. When Benno Kusche died in 2010 at the age of 94, one of the last good old days singers left us.