Kalman

I don't know why, but for whatever reason Franz Krommer is a pretty unknown composer. However, he is surely one of the better composers of his time, which lasted from three years after Mozart's birth to four after Beethoven's death. And his clarinet concerti are some of the finest work of his that I've heard. His Concerto in Eb Op. 36 is probably his most well known work, and it's not hard to see why. This rivals Mozart and Weber in sheer tunefulness and great passage work. His melodies are very hummable and memorable. The third movement especially seems to look toward Weber's Concertino, and is simply a joy.

This is an excellent spoof/satire of all things American with a side swipe at impoverished European royalty and the operetta genre to boot. Deborah Riedel is absolutely magnificent both in her acting and her singing. Her intentional horribly bad American accent in German is absolutely hilarious and is exactly the way so many Americans speak German although never so completely and swiftly. Yet when she sings, her German, of course, is impeccable and unaccented for, after all, she is an opera singer and will go only so far to dumb down.