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operawonk
An operating theatre for dissecting operas and disseminating operatic knowledge
Updated: 1 year 3 days ago HANDEL : PARTENOPERadio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 26th of July 2009 at 3 - 6 pm HANDEL: Partenope, an opera in three acts REVIEW (ENO 2008, set in Paris in 1920s) BERLIOZ : BEATRICE ET BENEDICTRadio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 19th of July 2009 at 3 - 5.10 pm INTRODUCTION (Wikipedia, with links to the libretto) BERLIOZ: Béatrice et Bénédict, an opera in two acts The four completed operas are: Benvenuto Cellini (1838), La Damnation de Faust (1846), Béatrice et Bénédict (1862), Les Troyens (1863). In our local opera group we have viewed Damned Faust, and Ruined Troy (The Trojans), but the other two are unlikely to appear in any opera house in New Zealand or Australia (but I don't mind at all if you can prove me wrong). Mention also Roméo et Juliette, and L'Enfance du Christ (the only Berlioz work I have sung in), which are only performed in concert halls, though they have a story-line. Berlioz was crazy about Shakespeare, and he was married to an English Shakespearean actress (for a while). Beatrice and Benedict is a gutted version of Shakespeare's Much ado about nothing, with some dialogue borrowed directly from the Bard, and the rest written by the composer himself. Actually, even the "ado" is pruned out, the threat to the marriage of Claudio and Hero (the bride); they become an idealized couple, and Beatrice and Benedick come to the fore (Perfick!). So, we miss out on this speech from Dogberry (replaced by Somarone) when the malefactors who have maligned Hero are brought to justice:"Marry, sir, they have committed false report; moreover, they have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are slanders [sic]; and lastly, they have belied a lady; thirdly they have verified unjust things: and, to conclude, they are lying knaves." The two recordings I have are conducted by Colin Davis, and here he is again, in Paris. Beatrice is sung by Josephine Veasey in one and Janet Baker in the other; here it is Joyce DiDonato (the only name familiar to me in the cast-list; we hear her at the NYMetropera). Colin Davis has conducted all the Berlioz works which have an orchestra (name one that does not!). BERNSTEIN : CANDIDERadio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 5th of July 2009 at 3 - 6.10 pm OVERVIEW (Wikipedia) PREVIEW (with audio-visual trailer) REVIEW (with photographs) GUIDE BERNSTEIN: Candide, an operetta in two acts This production by Robert Carsen (2006) updates it to the 20th century, with Westphalia saying West-failure. It will be good to hear the dialogue in between the singing, and hear if not see the dancing. This looks like the one with visual features that should be seen: Cunégonde as Marilyn Monroe, for example. But the Preview and the Review give us samples (moving and still). The introduction of Voltaire himself (with a wavy wig) is a novelty. Leonard Bernstein, a musical genius, was born in 1918, died too soon in 1990 (I blame cigarettes and whisky), but was still alive in 1989 when his recording of Candide was made. Candide was based on the novel (or novella) by Voltaire (1759), 86 pages in the modern edition I have in my hand; I remember reading it in French when I was at school, finding that Voltaire’s style and language is so clear. It is subtitled L’Optimisme, and it pursues the philosophical thought that this is “the best of all possible worlds”. For Lenny Bernstein, Candide was always a work in progress, constantly being revised. He conducted the London Symphony Orchestra, in a defiitive concert performance, available on audio disc and video disc. Bernstein and Adolph Green tell us what is going on. Watch for Jerry Hadley (Candide, but in real life Jerry got weighed down with troubles and shot himself), June Anderson (Cunégonde) Christa Ludwig (Old Lady), Della Jones (Paquette), Kurt Ollmann (Maximilian), and eventually Nicolai Gedda (three roles in Act 2). Candide, or Optimism (MDCCLIX). Reading Voltaire’s novella again in the original French (on the title page he jokes that it was translated from German, then believed to be the least harmonious of all the European languages) I have been amused (and appalled) by his satire on the beliefs and practices and events of his own time (the horrendous Lisbon earthquake; the burning alive of alleged heretics; the execution of an English admiral for not winning a victory over his French opponent; Italian opera has lousy librettos and bad actors). ACT ONE [1] The busy-busy overture. Candide will roam over Europe and America. [1a] Westphalia Chorale, “All hail Westphalia”, and that is where Candide hails from. [2] "Life is happiness indeed". Candide is the illegitimate nephew of a Baron, whose castle he lives in, with the Baroness and her son Maximilian, who both look down on him as their inferior, but the sweet daughter Cunégonde loves him, and he is very happy. [3] He is ‘optimistic’, because his teacher Pangloss has taught him that this is "the best of all possible worlds", in which everything is wisely planned, and is right and good. The maid Paquette gets along well with the tutor Pangloss, who gives her lessons in elementary physics, in the bushes. [4] "Oh, Happy We". C and C both agree, life together will be lovely: HE: Soon, when we think we can afford it, we’ll build a modest little farm. SHE: We’ll buy a yacht and live aboard it, rolling in luxury and stylish charm. //Cows and chickens / Social whirls //Peas and cabbage / Ropes of pearls //Smiling babies /Marble halls // Sunday picnics / Costume balls. For his presumption in reaching above his station, Candide is expelled from the Schloss. [5] "It must be so": My world is dust now, and all I loved is dead, Oh, let me trust now in what my master said: ‘There is a sweetness in every woe’, it must be so. [6] "Sieg Heil Westphalia". Candide is press-ganged into the army of the brutal Bulgars (the Prussians are meant); they slaughter everyone in his Schloss. [7] Candide’s lament. Cunégonde was reportedly raped and ripped (but she will be resurrected, though in the book she reveals later that she was saved by an officer); Maximilian will return as a Jesuit, and Pangloss will be revived in a mortuary. [8] When Pangloss meets Candide again he tells how he contracted syphilis, but he is not complaining. "Dear boy, you will not hear me speak with sorrow or with rancor of what has shrivelled up my cheek, and blasted it with canker." They sail with a merchant to Lisbon, see a volcano explode, and thirty thousand people killed in an earthquake; but Pangloss argues it must be for the best. They are arrested as heretics. [9] What a day for an auto-da-fé. Pangloss continues his long account of how syphilis (allegedly introduced by Columbus) passed from person to person and to Paquette and himself. He is hanged. Candide is flogged, and he resumes his travels. [10] "It must be me." Candide is apparently seeing unkindness and darkness everywhere, but he presumes it must be his own blindness hiding the kindness and sunlight. [11] The Paris Waltz. Cunégonde has turned up in Paris, the shared mistress of a Jew (Don Issachar) and a Christian prelate (the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris). The Jew has her on Tuesday, Thursday, and his Sabbath (Saturday); the Christian has access on Wedensday (or Wenzdey), Friday, and his Sabbath (Sunday); disputes may occur about Friday and Saturday night (the beginning and end of the Jewish Sabbath). [12] Cunégonde laments. "Glitter and be gay, that's the role I play; forced to bend my soul to a sordid role." Nevertheless the trinkets that go with the job (for example, a twenty-carat earring) are very endearing; if she's not pure, at least her jewels are; observe how bravely she conceals the dreadful shame she feels. [13] "You were dead you know." Candide is astonished when he discovers Cunégonde. He reminds her that she was shot and bayoneted. True, but love finds a way, and she changes the subject. They are now reunited after so much pain. Unfortunately, and inadvertently, Candide stabs the Jew and the Cardinal to death. They flee to Cadiz, together with Cunégonde's jewels and the old lady who has been guarding her. She tells them her life story (through the mouth of the narrator): daughter of a Polish Pope, abducted by a pirate, enslaved by Turks, and in a siege one of her buttocks was used as emergency rations (more details in [20] below). As they listen intently, their goods are stolen. She offers to sing for their supper. [14] The Old Lady's Tango. "I am easily assimilated." She starts speaking Spanish immediately. [15] Quartet Finale. The French police are in pursuit, so Candide accepts a commission to fight for the Jesuits in South America. "Once again we must be gone, moving onward to the New world.... Farewell to the Old! We're bound for the realms of Gold!" ACT TWO [16] Universal Good: “Have we learned and understood, everything that is, is good; everything that is, is planned, is wisely planned, is right and good?” After that lesson in “Intelligent Design”, we resume the picaresque tale of Candide the optimist. By chance, the whole family arrives in Buenos Aires at the same time. Maximilian and Paquette (the walking dead) are disguised as slave-girls. Don Fernando (et cetera, a list of names longer than his moustache) the Governor (Nicolai Gedda, in Bernstein's recording) is attracted to Maximilian, but settles for Cunégonde, and woos her with a serenade. [17] “Poets have said love is undying; don’t be misled, they were all lying.... Why talk of morals when springtime is flying? Why end in quarrels, reproaches, and sighing, crying for love, my love?.... [But] since you’re so pure. I shall betroth you, my love, though I feel sure I’ll come to loathe you, my love....” Max is taken away by an amorous Jesuit father. The old woman tells Candide the police are pursuing him, and he flees into the jungle. [18] The two ladies celebrate their conquest of the Governor: “We are women.... Every male I meet must acclaim for weeks my twinkling thighs my flaxen cheeks, my memorable mammaries like Alpine peaks, high above a wine-dark sea....” [19] Pilgrim’s procession, including Maximilian (now a Jesuit father) and Paquette (Jesuit abbess): “Come, heathen of America! Come , see the new domains of God! Ye who in darkness plod, come and dwell where Satan’s hoof has never trod.... in this new Eden Garden”. Candide is joyfully reunited with them, and he tells Maximilian that Cunégonde is also miraculously alive, and he intends to marry her; but Max is outraged at the the thought of his sister marrying a social inferior, and he attacks Candide, who accidentally kills him, and must flee back into the jungle. Three years have passed; in the Governor’s palace the two ladies are suffering the miseries of the rich and idle. [20] Quiet! (the governor repeatedly interjects). Lady: “... I have suffered a lot and I’m certainly not unaware that this life has its black side; I have starved in a ditch, I’ve been burned for a witch, and I’m missing one half of my backside. I’ve been beaten and whipped, and repeatedly stripped, and forced into all kinds of whoredom; but I’m finding of late that the very worst fate is to perish of comfort and boredom.... But I’d far rather be in a tempest at sea, or a bloody North African riot, than to sit in this dump on what’s left of my rump and put up with this terrible quiet! [21] Orchestral interlude. Candide and Cacambo (who?) take to a boat and drift into a dark cavern, and the stream leads them to El Dorado. [22] Candide’s ballad of Eldorado: “a land of happy people, just and kind and bold and free...They have no words for fear and greed, for lies and war, revenge and rage”. Yet they have untold wealth! Candide must drag himself away from this American Shangri-la to find his beloved. He is given numerous golden sheep (with golden fleeces?), but only two survive the hazardous journey. He sends Cacambo off to ransom Cunégonde with one of the sheep, and to take her to Venice. In Surinam Candide meets Martin, a professional pessimist, whose philosophy is the opposite of Pangloss (remember Pangloss?). [23] Martin’s laughing song: Words, words, words, words. “... Absurd ... Nothing to trust in this worst of all possible worlds...” [24] Bon voyage. Candide is innocently optimistic again, when he acquires a ship going to Venice; but he has been ‘fleeced’ of his last precious sheep in exchange for “a perfect wreck of a boat”. Vanderdendur, the Dutchman who gave it to him, bids him farewell and bon voyage; he acknowledges to himself that he is bad, for deceiving this fine lad, he is a cad, and it makes him sad. The ship sinks; Martin drowns; and the same fate subsequently befalls Vanderdendur; the golden sheep floats in the sea, and Candide shares a raft with it and five dethroned kings, and also a galley-slave; it is the long-lost Pangloss, and he leads the kings in a repentance session. [25] The Kings’ Barcarolle: “Yo-ho for the Simple Life” They arrive in Venice at carnival time, and every one is masked. The Casino is the centre of attraction; the kings go in to pursue the simple life of baccarat and roulette; Cunégonde and the Dame are employed to encourage the gamblers; Paquette is the reigning courtesan; Maximilian is the corrupt Prefect of Police. [26] Venice gambling scene: “Money, money, money”. [27] “What’s the use? There’s no use in cheating, it’s all so defeating, and wrong, oh so wrong, if you just have to pass it along!” (Old Lady, Ragotski [casino owner], Maximilian, a Crook) [28] The Venice Gavotte: “It’s a very moving tale” (Candide and the company). Pangloss breaks the bank, and ladies flock around him. When the masks fall C and C recognize each other; Candide is shocked into silence, but first sings his lament! [29] Nothing more than this? He rebukes His beloved for her love of luxury. They all retire to a farm, but are not happy. [30] Universal Good: “Life is neither good nor bad”. [31] Make our garden grow: “You’ve been a fool and so have I .... We’ll build our house, and chop our wood, and make our garden grow”. Pangloss has the last say: "Any questions?" In the video version of Bernstein's recording, the white-haired man we see as narrator, and Pangloss, and Martin, is Adolph Green; he and his partner, Betty Comden, have written such classics as On the Town and Singin’ in the Rain. RIMSKY-KORSAKOV : PSKOVITYANKARimsky's The Maid of Pskov
Radio New Zealand Concert network Sunday 28th of June 2009 at 3 - 5.15 pm INTRODUCTION (Wikipedia) PREVIEW (with pictures) SYNOPSIS ('playbill' from the theatre) RECORDINGS RIMSKY-KORSAKOV: The Maid of Pskov, in three acts The story concerns Tsar Ivan the Terrible, and for this reason his name was attached to the final version of the work; the maid of the title is Olga, his daughter (as it is eventually revealed). The setting is Ivan's war against the cities of Novgorod (which he destroyed) and Pskov (which he spared). There is a Romeo and Juliet love story interwoven into the drama, Tucha and Olga being the lovers, and she is being forced to marry an older man; she is killed accidentally in the fighting between the rebel army (including her Tucha) and the Tsar's forces. The original version of the opera was completed in 1872, and received its premiere in 1873 in St Petersburg, Russia. The third and final version was completed in 1892 and was made famous by the legendary bass Fyodor Chaliapin (Shalyapin) in the role of Ivan the Terrible. I have no recording of this one (it is completely new to me) so I have included a heading above, for your information. PSKOV? Spit it out! (Presumably P-SKOV, not PSoKov?) VIVALDI : ORLANDO FURIOSORadio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 21st of June 2009 at 3 - 6.10 pm INTRODUCTION (Wikipedia) SYNOPSIS LIBRETTO: A copy of the libretto is available on the Wikipedia site (see Introduction above). Beware: click and a 33-page pdf will arrive! Italian text only, no subtitles! I copied it into a document and reduced it to a mere ten pages, two columns on each. VIVALDI: Orlando furioso, an opera in three acts Why was Orlando furious? Antonio Vivaldi, the red priest, put this opera together in 1727 with a libretto by Grazio Braccioli, based on Ariosto's poem Orland Furioso; in 1714 he had also composed what some people would mistakenly call a 'prequel', from the same source; in Orlando finto pazzo our hero is getting in shape for his authentic rage with some counterfeit madness. Read about it elsewhere. http://operawonk.blogspot.com/2007/10/vivaldi-orlando-finto-pazzo.html BIZET : LES PÊCHEURS DE PERLESBizet's Pearl Fishers
Radio New Zealand Concert network Sunday 14th of June 2009 at 3 - 5 pm INTRODUCTION (Wikipedia) SYNOPSIS (a preview of this performance) SUMMARY LIBRETTO (my browsers give ? for every French letter with an accent sign: é, è, ê; difficult to read) If anyone thinks of castigating me for not recounting the plot of the opera, let it be said that what you are requesting is supplied in four different forms under those four headings. The New York Metropera has not staged this work in this century, so no study notes are available from that usually helpful source. BIZET: The Pearl Fishers, an opera in three acts In The Good Opera Guide Denis Forman rates this as one of the two most underrated operas (the other being Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur) and he awards them both Alpha. Georges Bizet was aged 24 when he composed it, and while it enjoyed moderate success initially (1863), the French have neglected it, along with the rest of the 30 operatic works by Bizet, except Carmen, who will certainly not let them ignore her. Let us see/hear whether the French Canadians of Montréal can treat it with more respect. Horrible to tell: Bizet's orchestral score is lost; only vocal scores survive; the orchestration has been restored by one Arthur Hammond (Esquire, or Monsieur?). I am a great admirer of this work (that is not to say that I am great, but that my admiration for this opera is huge). My earliest encounter with it was the duet from Act 1, Au fond du temple saint (In the depths of the holy temple), and by coincidence Léopold Simoneau and René Bianco have just started singing it on the record I am listening to (Jean Fournet conducting); but I have already heard it twice today in the Toulouse production (Michel Plasson), with John Aler and Gino Quilico; they provide two versions (the original one is in an appendix, and its weakness is the lack of a return to the big tune). Alain Vanzo and Guillermo Sarabia are in the third recording I have (Georges Prêtre), and thus I own three of the four sets listed in the Wikipedia (not five, as the Pierre Dervaux set appears twice, and sleuths will detect why). The best-known version of the duet of the two pearlfisher friends, Nadir the tenor, Zurga the baritone, is the one I first heard: a 45 rpm seven-inch vinyl disc, with Jussi Björling and Robert Merrill (I never bought a copy because you could hear it on the radio every day). This is what it is about. Nadir has been away from home for a long time, hunting tigers and other ferocious felines, now he is reunited with Zurga they recall that the parting of the ways came when they found they were each in love with the same woman, a virgin-priestess they had seen inside a Hindu temple. (At this point in my slow progress, side 1 of the Prêtre recording has reached the duet, and Vanzo and Sarabia bypass the reprise [damned cheek!] and move into "a Polonaise-cabaletta", I am told). Now for the pedantry. Pearl fishers? Do they catch them with nets or lines? They are not pursuing fishes but seeking oysters, which will be hiding a pearl in their shells. All right, they are shell fish, but these are properly pearl divers, or pearlers, as I call them in my book on the subject of mystical pearling. The librettists were Eugène Cormon and Michel Carré, and at first Mexico was to be the setting of the story, but then they decided on Ceylon (aka Serendib, as in serendipity, or Sri Langka). Marco Polo knew that Ceylon and the Coromandel coast of southern India were important pearling grounds; the season lasted only six weeks in April and May (so Nadir would have plenty of time for wild-game hunting). Marco was also well aware that the Singhalese people were Buddhists ('idolaters', he called them misleadingly). So why are we looking at a Hindu temple (admittedly in ruins) and people worshipping the god Brahma (the Creator, who is said to have only one temple dedicated to him in India, the reason being that Vishnu the Sustainer and Shiva the Destroyer are the deities that worshippers must keep propitiated, with offerings)? (Yes, that was a question, and not simply rhetorical.) We realize from events in our own time that the Singhalese in the south (descendents of Aryans from northern India) are Buddhists, and the Tamils (some of them are tigers) in the north of the island (their ancestors were Dravidians from South India) are Hindu. But here the two Hindu friends are talking (or singing in their duet) about a visit they made to Kandy, in the mountains, in the south, NE of Colombo, and there in a Hindu temple they prostrated themselves before a beautiful virgin and adored her as a goddess; indeed they both fell in love with her (against regulations); and yet the temple in Kandy is the shrine of a tooth of the Buddha, with monks as attendants, and definitely no priestesses, or even nuns. What about the names of the characters? They are more Islamic than Indian: Nadir (an Arabic word meaning the lowest point, opposite of zenith), Leila (Semitic 'night', making her a lady of the night), Nourabad (light/fire-servant?), Zurga (Greek?). Anything else? I don't think it is a silly story. Years ago a Christian student in the religious college which employed me as a lecturer (in South Australia) shared a tape recording of the opera with Helen and myself; he had recorded it from ABC TV, without the picture; he related the story fervently; I can understand that the ending impressed him, where a man lays down his life for his friends. I have seen a performance of this opera, in the Wellington Opera House, with our Roger Wilson on the stage. That old Björling record still gets requested on the radio, and in the past week (Wedensday 12th of June 2009), at a funeral in Taranaki, I heard 'Deep inside the sacred temple' played as a euphonium duet. HANDEL : TAMERLANOHandel's Tamerlane
Radio New Zealand Concert network Sunday 26th of October 2008 at 3 - 6.20 pm Sunday 7th of June 2009 at 3 - 6.10 pm COMPOSER BACKGROUND INTRODUCTION SYNOPSIS REVIEW SCORE!! HANDEL: Tamerlano, an opera in three acts Notice the name Plácido Domingo; here he is (at his age!) singing a new tenor role, that of Bajazet, Emperor of the Ottoman Turks; and we know that the vocal lines of Haendel's scores move along speedily, spitting sparks. It was one of Handel's twenty-day miracles of composition (like Messiah), in 1724, following his Julius Caesar. This is one of the master's great operas. Note that this Washington production uses a later revision (1731), omitting a lot of recitative. Notes on the history behind the opera and summaries of the plot are available by clicking on the headings above. No libretto available from the usual Italian source, but the musical score is on line! Sunday 26th of October 2008 at 3 - 6.20 pm Tamerlano (Timur the Tatar)..................... Nicholas Spanos Andronico (Greek prince)..................... Mary-Elen Nesi Bajazet (Bayezid I, Ottoman Turk Sultan)....Tassis Christoyannis Asteria (his daughter).......................... Mata Katsuli Irene (princess of Trebizond, T's betrothed)....Irini Karaianni Leone (friend of T and A)........................... Petros Magoulas Orchestra of Patras/George Petrou (Dabringhaus & Grimm (MDG 609 1457) WAGNER : GÖTTERDÄMMERUNGRichard Wagner's Dusk of the Gods
Radio New Zealand Concert network Sunday 31st of May 2009 at 3 - 9 pm COMPOSER CHARACTERS BACKGROUND UNDERGROUND The meaning of it all ANALYSIS SYNOPSIS STORYLINE LIBRETTO WAGNER: Der Ring des Nibelungen, the stage-festival play, performed as a tetralogy of prologue and three operas WAGNER: Götterdämmerung, an opera in a prologue and three acts The thread of fate breaks in the final instalment of The Ring of the Nibelung cycle which ultimately brings about the downfall of the gods in a great conflagration started by the funeral pyre of Siegfried and Brünnhilde. Brünnhilde..................... Katarina Dalayman The Ring is a massive opera of the fairy-tale genre. Right? The Rhine nixies, the Valkyries, and the Norns would be the fairies. The title is literally “gods-dusk”; it is usually translated as “Twilight of the gods”; 'twilight' means 'between-light', the light that is seen when the sun is below the horizon, either at morning or evening. The word 'dusk' refers to the darker side of twilight, and 'Dämmerung' ('dawning' or 'dusking') can even be translated as 'nightfall', thus implying 'downfall', in Wagner's word. At the end Brünnhilde will say that the gods' end is now dusking/dawning (dämmert). So the libretto I have before me seems to have got it right: “The dusk of the gods (Goetterdaemmerung)”. A pause for a note on German orthography (eminently superior to English chaotic spelling, which was corrupted when French conquered Anglo-Saxon, and the very simple and sensible 'cwic' became 'quick' with two additional and superfluous 'c' letters; x is not necessary, 'focs' shows all the sounds; and German 'braun' tells us precisely how to say the word, but English 'brown', with almost the same pronunciation as the German word, gives a choice, whether as in drown, or grown, or grow-en): the 'umlaut' sign (which turns the sound of the vowel around) consists of two vertical strokes, representing the letter 'e' in the old German handwriting, but it comes out as two dots on typewriters. The o (as in Gott, and god and dog, two words the English system gets right!) becomes ö (in Götter, 'gods') and is pronounced as in 'fleur'. A survival of the ä appears in English as 'man' becoming 'men' (German 'Mann', plural 'Männer'). The e can be restored, if necessary or desired, hence Goetterdaemmerung. So GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG is the grand climax of the RING, when the curtain is RUNG down on the DAMM GODS. And now, on with the show! The Dusk of the Gods, the fourth facet of the Ring (@ 4h15m), is the longest but has the fewest longueurs (Denis Forman reassures us). In our video-opera group we are not racing through it (as happens on the radio); we are taking in one scene at a time (12 or more), devouring only one 'bleeding gobbet' ('lump of raw meat') on each occasion. Remember its libretto was written first of the four, and it has a prologue plus three acts, which became a prologue (Rheingold) plus three other operas; another way of describing it is: an evening and three days. Along the way we will have the whole story related again, and again. The Rhine nixies will swim back to delight us (if they sing in tune with pleasant tone); they will at least get the golden ring back, but as the river finally engulfs all, then presumably the rest of the gold is back where it belongs. Strange to say, Wotan never appears (saving the expense of another baritone), but he gets several mentions (not all honourable). In Siegfried (Act 3) Wotan the Wanderer and Wonderer (those two words should each be used for the other and their spelling would be truly phonetic) had mused on “the end of the gods”, and had summoned up Erda for psychiatric consultation and predictive information; she was too tired and told him to go to her three daughters, the Norns, who weave fate (or whatever) with their rope. (They used to say that the Soviet Union was the only place where the past was unpredictable; in Wagner's world the past is predictable, and it is repeated constantly so that we don't forget it.) PROLOGUE Scene 1 [1] And here they are, the three Norns, nameless but vocally distinguishable (soprana, mezzosoprana, contralta; I give them feminine gender endings to exclude men playing the parts). They are doing their German rope trick at Brünnhilde's rock. The first and eldest Norn ties the golden cord to a fir-tree. They usually sing and sling the string at the World-Ash-Tree (Welt-Esche), but Wotan has chopped it down (and up) for firewood. He once came to the tree, and drank from its spring, and paid for a boon with one of his eyes (poked out by a protruding twig?!). He made his powerful spear from one of its branches, and on it he wrote in true Runes (a true rune is actually simply a letter in another form of the Greco-Roman alphabet, the Runic alphabet, which itself was borrowed from the Phoenicians; but Wagner has added mystery to the term). Wotan’s inscriptions recorded his treaties, and that is why, whenever covenants are mentioned, we hear the spear motif (a long descent down a scale). Incidentally, there will be an oath on a spear scene later. The second Norn winds the cord around a rock at the mouth of the cave (if permitted by the director). Her report is that the spring has run dry. After young Siegfried shattered the spear, Wotan ordered Walhall's heroes to destroy the Ash-tree (and soon it will be reduced to ashes). [Despite what you thought I said in the Manawatu Standard about clearing the landscape of forests to make more lawns, meadows, and pastures, and the uselessness of trees as not being able to grow money, I don't class idiots who cut down trees as heroes. See bonzoz.blogspot.com] The third weird-sister tells us that in the giant-built hall Wotan sits with heaps of faggots (Scheite), awaiting the dusking of the end of the gods. The rope is being frayed by the sharp rock, and when it is to be thrown northwards, it breaks. All their wisdom is finished, and they retire to bury themselves with Mother Erda. Scene 2 [2] Dawn comes up like thunder; Siegfried and Brünnhilde emerge from the cave. Wagner instructs him to be fully armed (did he fit into her armour?), so she must be in her gown (she does not have a change of clothes, but she can wash it and dry it by the fire, which has not gone out but is still blazing to keep intruders out). She bids him set off to accomplish deeds of glory (does she want him out of her house because he is cluttering up the place already?). She says she is letting him go because she loves him so much, and she has given him all her wisdom and power. He says it has all been too much to take in, but he at least knows how she feels about him. It has been a great adventure for both of them, and they have plighted their troth; so he gives her the Alberich’s ring as a token of their mutual love (he is going to the Rhine, and he should have taken it with him and thrown it in the river, and then they would have lived happily ever after, and so would everyone else!). Blissfully she puts the ring on. He can have Grane the Pegasus-like horse in return (though the sturdy steed has lost his flying licence; and there goes her only source of meat). The rapturous couple exchange some more sweet nothings, including a bunch of hearty ‘Heil’ exclamations. She waves to him till he disappears. [3] The orchestra plays Siegfried’s Rhine Journey. We would assume that Siegfried is riding along the river bank, but I have seen suggestions that he and the horse are on a raft on the water, but Wagner has the curtain down all through it, so that they can change the scenery. However, when Siegfried arrives at his destination, the stage directions say that he is in a Kahn (a boat or a barge) which has to be moored. And now we come to the first Act of the drama! We have had two happy scenes out of three, but now everything turns sour and everyone becomes bitter (except Siegfried, who is always happy-go-lucky and he does not know he is doing bad things, because he is on drugs). For the fine details of the plot, and the musical leitmotifs, study the Metropera guides under STORYLINE and ANALYSIS. For the rest, this is how Wagner divides it all. Act 1.1 Gibichung Hall. Gunther (King of the Gibichungs), Hagen (son of Alberich through a union that did not involve love, which he has foresworn!), Gutrune Gibich (sister of one, half-sister of the other). The first two are plotting (Alberich has instructed Hagen in ways to retrieve the Ring for him) to marry Gutrune to Siegfried, and thus free up Brünnhilde for marriage to Gunther. Act 1.2 Siegfried is seeking employment as a fighting man. They give him a potion of fogetfulness, and he immediately falls for Gutrune (as if she was the first woman he had ever seen). The two men go to get Brünnhilde. Hagen stays to keep watch. Act 1.3 Brünnhilde is at her rock, kissing the ring and enjoying some happy memories of her lover, when her Valkyrie sister Waltraute arrives with news from home; all gloom; she must give the ring back to the Rhine maidens, or they will all perish. Unthinkable! Act 1.4 Left alone B hears Siegfried's horn but is startled by a strange figure coming through the flames: we know it is Siegfried, wearing the tarnhelm and taking the form of Gunther. She struggles with him, but she is overpowered and sent into the cave, for consummation purposes; S takes the ring from her and announces to himself that his sword Notung will separate them while he takes Gunther's part (a very risky operation, and the cold metal would be off-putting). Act 2.1 Hagen at his watch is visited by his father Alberich, and murder is suggested. Death to Wotan and his grandson Siegfried the Wälsung. Act 2.2 Siegfried reports that Gunther is bringing B home to the hall. Gutrune greets him and asks Hagen to prepare the wedding. Act 2.3 Hagen blows his huge cowhorn and summons the vassals. They think some disaster has struck, but they soon learn the truth and are amazed that that grim Hagen is being merry. (This is the only chorus in the whole thing, and it is the male voice choir; the ride of the Valkyries is not sung by the chorus but by a set of soloists.) B is astonished at what she finds, and accuses S of treachery; S denies it by an oath on the spear; B says this spear will avenge her. Act 2.4 Hagen takes her aside and offers to be her agent; she eventually tells him that she has put a spell of invulnerability on S, but not on his back, because he would always face his foes. Right! Gunther is now brought into the plot. Act 3.1 Siegfried's horn is answered by the cow horns of the Gibichungs, They are hunting a boar. The water nymphs of the Rhine know what is going on, and Siegfried is their hero; they tease him, as is their wont, and tell him the history of the ring, and urge him to give it back to them, threateningly. But he won't part with it. Act 3.2 When the hunting party is united, S tells his life story, and he remembers he woke Brünnhilde; when two ravens fly out of a bush he jumps up, turns his back on Hagen, and receives a thrust of the spear. Hagen cries Revenge! and stalks off. Siegfried continues his sad tale and rejoices again in his love for his true bride. Wagner had originally given this opera the title Siegfried's Death; this now occurs, and to the strains of noble funeral music, he is carried back to the hall. Act 3.3 Hagen arrives first and reports, untruthfully, that Siegfried has been killed by a wild boar. Gunther is struck dead while endeavouring to prevent him from taking the ring; then Siegfried's dead hand raises itself menacingly and strikes terror into all. Brünnhilde takes charge of the situation, declaring herself to be his true bride, and ordering the men to erect a funeral pyre (in typical Aryan fashion she will virtuously join him in the fire). He was faithfully faithless to her, and she takes back the ring. She and Grane ride into the flames (the Australian soprano Marjorie Lawrence was one who did this to the letter). She is thus cremated, and as the Rhine flows over the hall, the nymphs reclaim their gold ring (drowning Hagen in the process, I presume). Valhalla on high is caught up in the conflagration. Listen for the theme of love's redemption (first briefly poured out by Sieglinde in act 3 of Die Walküre) rising above the destruction (you may receive a frisson for your trouble, or a warm feeling). It is not the end of the world, I trust. If you want to know about the Siegfried and Brünnhilde of the sagas go to: http://collesseum.googlepages.com, specifically The Völsung Saga and The Nibelung Epic. Sunday 28th of September 2008 at 3 - 7.20 pm Götterdämmerung, an opera in a prologue and three acts Siegfried........................ Stig Andersen Gunther......................... Oscar Hillebrandt Alberich........................ Hartmut Welker Hagen........................... Matti Salminen (He's the man!) Brünnhilde..................... Susan Bullock Gutrune......................... Eszter Wierdl Waltraute...................... Cornelia Kallisch First Norn..................... Annamária Kovács Second Norn................ Judit Németh Third Norn.................... Mária Temesi Woglinde...................... Monika Gonzales Wellgunde..................... Katalin Gémes Flosshilde...................... Atala Schöck Hungarian Radio Chorus & Orch/Adám Fischer (recorded in the Bartók National Concert Hall, Palace of Arts, Budapest) WAGNER : SIEGFRIEDRichard Wagner's Siegfried
Radio New Zealand Concert network Sunday 24th of May 2009 at 3 - 8.45 pm COMPOSER CHARACTERS BACKGROUND UNDERGROUND The meaning of it all ANALYSIS SYNOPSIS STORYLINE LIBRETTO WAGNER: Der Ring des Nibelungen, stage-festival play, WAGNER: Siegfried, an opera in three acts We meet the adolescent hero Siegfried and observe his quest for adventure and love; after slaying a dragon he acquires treasure (including the Ring) , and he finds affection at the fiery rock where he awakens Brünnhilde. Brünnhilde..................... Iréne Theorin In John Culshaw's book Ring Resounding (1967), on p.227, he tells of an objection raised by a listener to the famous Decca 'sonic stage' studio recording of Siegfried, conducted by Georg Solti: on stage Windgassen sounds tired, but he is always fresh on the records. Solti replied simply that 'Wagner was mad', expecting a tenor to last the distance over four hours, even with long intervals. With studio recordings we can hear it as Wagner imagined it. Nevertheless, when I first started listening to the Bayreuth recordings (in 1953 on Australian Broadcasting Commission transmissions), I was struck by the superior sweetness and strength that Windgassen could maintain compared with the other feeble tenors they hired, and my school-friends Geldard and Grattan agreed with me. As for Birgit Nilsson who was a resplendent Brünnhilde in both sets of recordings, I remember the report on the New York performance where they needed a different Tristan for each of the three acts, opposite her Isolde. The Metropera teaching aids are supplied above, but this is my version of the story. Wagner, Siegfried (1876) (or The Lad that loved a Valkyrie, as W.S. Gilbert might have said) Act 1We left Brünnhilde sleeping on a rock, surrounded by fire which burns continually. While the Valkyrie has been cosily hibernating there, Sieglinde, the sister of the slain Siegmund, had given birth to their son Siegfried, in the forest, and had died in the process. Mime, the Nibelung dwarf we met in Rheingold, forging away in the underworld, is now dwelling above ground in his smithy, and he had taken on the task of raising the orphan boy. Fafner, the giant who had killed his brother Fasolt, is now ensconced in his Fort Worth cave, gloating over the glittering gold, and by means of the Tarnhelm, the magic headdress that Mime had made, Fafner has the form of a dragon, all the better to guard the treasure against those who would steal it. Alberich the Nibelung, the brother of Mime, was the original robber of the bank of the Rhine, run by a band of silly ninnies, or nixies, bathing beauties skilled in ersatz seduction but not in production or protection of gold. The deep music we hear at the start speaks of brooding: Fafner the dragon on his nest of golden eggs; Mime the dwarf pondering how he might gain the golden ring and have power over his brother Alberich and everyone else in the world. Mime's present problem is how to control the unruly adolescent who wants a sword, and whenever he is given one he smashes it. Mime is thinking that the two pieces of Siegmund’s sword Notung that are now in his possession would do nicely for piercing the giant-dragon’s heart. The whole of Act 1 is concerned with forging this weapon. Siegfried bounds in leading one of his playmates (as he will say in Act 2, when he blows his horn only wolves and bears come to investigate), and he mischievously terrifies Mime with his bear, before sending the animal back into the woods. Siegfried demands a sword (so he can have adventures smiting and slaying); as usual the latest model is rejected and smashed on the anvil. Mime offers him some hot stew, and that too is cast aside; Siegfried says he does his own hunting and roasting out in the wild. Mime starts off on the ‘Where did I go wrong?’ routine, pleading that he had been a good parent, and sobbing. Siegfried responds to this by saying he hates Mime, and the birds and beasts of the forest are dearer to him; he has seen them lovingly tending their offspring. He uses violence on Mime to force him to reveal who his real mother and father were. Mime tells him everything we already know, and Siegfried wants his father’s sword repaired. He is leaving home and asserting his independence. Mime sits moping. The Valhalla theme sounds out, which suggests Wotan is around, and someone calling himself Wanderer emerges from the woods. Yes, he needs to get out of the house, to give his wife Fricka a break, perhaps, or maybe he is just allergic to nagging. He proposes a merry quiz with his own head as the stake. He answers Mime’s three questions with ease, on the inhabitants (or dominant beings) of the underworld (Nibelungs in the depths of the Earth), those on the surface (giants on the back of the world), and on cloudy heights the gods. Wotan insists that Mime goes through the same ordeal. First, the family that Wotan loves but treats badly? The Volsungs of course. What is the name of the sword that Siegfried will use against Fafner? Notung. Who will join its pieces together? Mime is stumped. He will lose his life. Siegfried returns, and eventually decides to work the sword himself. This time, after a lot of ‘Hoho! Hohei!’, when he tests the sword it is the anvil that breaks. Act 2 Young Siegfried, the unloved adolescent with an unfettered attitude, pumped up with testosterone and adrenalin and with no trace of fear in his constitution, now has a sword to play with. His father Siegmund’s peerless weapon, Notung, has been restored to its pristine form, and having smashed an anvil it is ready to take on weighty dragons, wily dwarfs, and even the spear of Wotan, which originally broke it. Act 2, Scene 1 Alberich the Nibelung has come out of his hole and is muttering to himself in front of a cave. Suddenly a glimmering glow gleams in the gloom of night (that is an example of how Wagner’s alliterative poetry works in German); a stormy wind announces the Wanderer Wotan, and the moon shines forth on him (he should be mounted on his horse). An angry confrontation ensues: What are you doing here? Wanderer (also known as Light Alberich) says he has only come to watch Black Alberich keeping his watch, not to do anything. (Chéreau dresses them alike in his Bayreuth production.) The Nibelung knows that the god is powerless because of the covenant he made with the giants, written in runes on his spear (Daaa di da di dam dam dam dam dam, down the scale, is the contract and spear motif). Alberich is all set to rule the world, but Wotan knows that Mime will be bringing Siegfried to wrest the ring from the dragon. Wotan calls out to Fafner the ‘worm’ to wake up. Who is disturbing my sleep, he growls (through a loudspeaker). They both warn him about the brave stripling who is coming to challenge him. Alberich asks Fafner to give him the Ring, so that Siegfried will have no reason to attack the guardian of the treasure. The dragon declines, and reclines in slumber again. Wotan rides off laughing at Alberich’s failure but warning him of doom. Act 2, Scene 2 Daylight comes, and Mime brings Siegfried to the dragon’s lair, the cave of treasures. This is where Siegfried might learn fear, Mime says, and describes the monster to him (In the Patrice Chéreau version the dragon is wheeled around on a cart by stagehands; nothing to be afraid of.) Mime tells him to wait till the dragon comes out to drink at the spring, then he retires to the spring himself, murmuring his hope that Fafner and Siegfried will slay each other. Here we arrive at a truly beautiful part of the opera. Siegfried lies under a linden-tree (that is, a lime-tree, but it does not bear limes). He thinks about his hate for Mime, and wonders what his real father and mother were like; certainly not like the ugly gnome who has parented him up to this point. Do all human mothers die when they give birth to a son? How he would love to see his mother. She probably had brightly shining doe's eyes, but even more beautiful. The birds sing (flutes, clarinets, oboes, in the orchestra); one in particular seems to be talking to him. (Chéreau has it imprisoned in a small box cage so we can see it; the poor little thing darts about in its prison all the time, not singing happy songs at all.) He tells the bird that the dwarf had said that we can learn the language of birds. He cuts a reed and tries to answer the bird in flute sounds (cor anglais!), without success. So he blows a lusty forest tune on his silver horn, hoping to attract a good companion. This time he attracts not the usual wolf or bear but a dragon. They have a merry conversation. What big teeth you have, Grandpa. All the better to &c. They fight. Notung pierces the beast’s heart. (Chéreau has the giant Fafner crawl out of the dying reptile.) Fafner wants to know who has killed him and who put him up to it. Siegfried has no idea what to say, but from Fafner’s death aria he learns about the giants who once ruled the world and now they will all be dead and gone. But Siegfried is warned that the instigater will now kill him in turn, if he is not careful. The youth finally gives his name and wants this fount of knowledge to tell him about his own origins, but Fafner expires pronouncing the name Siegfried. Siegfried happens to taste the dragon’s blood, and finds that he can understand bird-talk, and the chirpy soprano tells him he has won the jackpot; he should claim the Nibelung hoard and take the useful tarnhelm (a magic cap) and the powerful ring. He goes into the cave. The two Nibelung dwarf brothers, namely Mime and Alberich, quarrel over who will gain the gold. Siegfried comes out with the loot and Mime asks him if he has learnt fear yet. Nope, says the dope. Mime offers him a poison potion [both from the same Latin word, meaning 'drink'], but dragon’s blood also enables Siegfried to discern the real meaning of a deceiver’s words; and so he lops off Mime’s head. He sits down again and bemoans his orphanhood and expresses once again his longing for a mate. The bird tells him about Brünnhilde on the fiery rock, available only to a fearless hero. That’s me to a T, says he, just my cup of tea; and led by the bird he lopes off. Act 3 The story so far: the young orphan Siegfried, grandson of the god Wotan, and son of the twins Siegmund and Sieglinde, is ignorant of his lineage and he also knows no fear, so he has no trouble confronting and slaying the giant-dragon Fafner and seizing the Ring of power. He also kills his caregiver, the Nibelung dwarf Mime, who tries to poison him to get the Ring. However, he refrains from snuffing out the bird who comes and sings frequent refrains, about a desirable woman on a fiery rock. Now you would expect Siegfried to be more interested in food than sex, after all his exertion with the sword; but Wagner does not provide a restaurant in the wild place beyond the forest. Now read on (but Wagner keeps the recapitulations going, and every quarter of an hour one character tells another personage what has been happening in the recent and distant past). Act 3, Scene 1 At the start of Act 3, Wotan is still seeking to learn what the future holds for his world; so he summons up the Earth-goddess, Erda, the fount of knowledge and wisdom. She is very sleepy, and apparently she does not recognize him as the one who fathered the Valkyries through her; and it seems to me that she can only remember giving birth to Brünnhilde. We have to remind ourselves that Wagner wrote the libretto of the whole Ring cycle backwards, so when he came to The Valkyrie, he possibly decided he needed nine of them to do a decent ride of the Valkyries (not that they do it on stage anymore, not even with lightweight boys on hobby-horses). But you are making me digress, and you should have realized that this hypothesis can be refuted by referring to Götterdämmerung (written before Siegfried), where Brünnhilde is sitting on her rock wondering why Siegfried has not come home for his dinner, and her sister Waltraute visits her and reports that the Valkyries don’t get around much any more. The conversation between Wotan and Erda runs thus: Wake up, you all-knowing witch [wise female]. Who is disrupting my slumber? [just like the dragon, earlier] The Wanderer, wanting to pick your brains. Go and talk to the Norns, they are awake, winding their cord of fate. [her 3 daughters] The Norns cannot tell me whether the wheel of fate can be stopped. Well, I bore a brave and wise daughter to Wotan; go and ask her. No, Brünnhilde was disobedient and is now dead to the world, until a man rouses her. In that case, let me go back to sleep and seal up my knowledge. No, Mother, not till you tell me how Wotan can be freed of the care you put in his heart. You are not what you call yourself! Why are you disturbing my sleep? You are not what you think you are! Wotan’s will is the end of the gods. Go to sleep. With regard to the music, the first theme we hear is the upsurging motif (Da-di-da-di-da-di-da) that portrays the Rhine River at the beginning of The Rhinegold; and it also refers to Erda, who sometimes rises up out of the earth, as she will here. The next motif represents the downfall of the gods; it runs downwards, and (please note carefully) it is the opposite of the previous one, which perhaps also describes the rise of the gods to Valhalla, their celestial home. Another plunging theme is the Spear and the oaths and covenants associated with Wotan’s weapon; it has thirteen notes, which descend the scale, plodding in march time. Its counterpart, I suggest, is the motif that arises when Wotan finally tells Erda that a new world is coming, to be created by Brünnhilde and Siegfried. This theme will ring out at the end, as the two lovers embrace. Act 3, Scene 2 Siegfried is on his way to Brünnhilde’s fiery rock. His informant (a little bird told him) has flown off, and now he encounters an elderly gentlemen, who asks him where he is going, and quizzes him about his history. This Wanderer is Wotan, who already knows all the answers to his questions, and Siegfried does too, and so do we. Right then: the woodbird talked to him, and he understood because he tasted the blood of the dragon (Fafner the giant), and it was Mime the ugly dwarf who goaded him to do it, to teach him fear, and he himself forged the broken pieces of the sword; and if the old man does not stop asking all these mocking questions he will get a taste of the same medicine. And where did you get that hat, and what happened to your eye? Probably you lost it when you barred the way to some other stranger, so get out of my space or you might lose the other one. This should have been a happy reunion (“My lad, I’m your grand-dad”), but it turns into a family quarrel (“Show respect to your elders”). Wotan is wrathful and Siegfried has lost patience; he suddenly realizes thet he is facing his father’s old foe; revenge at last! At the end of The Valkyrie, Wotan had declared: “Whoever fears the point of my spear, never step through this fire”. Here was one who was not afraid of him. Siegfried smashes Wotan’s spear with Siegmund’s restored sword Notung. Last time (in The Valkyrie, end of Act 2) it was the other way round: the spear shattered the sword, somehow. My guess is that it is because Siegfried is wearing the Ring, and this makes him more powerful than Wotan. The old wanderer disappears, the young adventurer heads for the circle of fire “to find the bride”. With a Hoho and a Hahei (or two), and singing lustily (“Lustig! Lustig!”), and blowing his horn, he exclaims: “Jetzt lock’ ich ein liebes Gesell” (Now I will attract a dear companion). This harks back to when he was in the forest, and the only creatures he could attract were wolves and bears, but when he started talking to birds he blew on his horn in the hope that “ein lieber Gesell” would be attracted by it. There Wagner used a masculine noun; here Gesell is neuter, perhaps because Siegfried is not supposed to know what a woman is like. But he knows that the object of his quest is a bride named Brünnhilde, who might teach him fear. Act 3, final scene We have seen Siegfried pass through the blaze (he would go through fire and water to reach the bride a little bird has told him about, and he will secretly marry her); he has stripped her of her helmet and breastplate (though her dress is still on her). With trepidation and closed eyes he has pressed his lips to hers, wondering whether this might prove to be for him the kiss of death or for her the kiss of life. I used to listen to a ten-inch long-play recording of this love-scene, sung by Kirsten Flagstad and Set Svanholm, so it will last about half an hour. Brünnhilde slowly sits up. “Heil dir, Sonne!” (Hail to thee, sun!). Long was my sleep; now I am awake: who is the hero who awakens me? Siegfried tells her excitedly that he is the one who has come to rouse her. He sings Heil to his mother who bore him, and the maid echoes this. She always knew he would be the one who won her, and the word “love” comes up often in their enthusiastic deliberations. Brünnhilde looks tenderly on Grane her horse as he grazes, who had also been woken by Siegfried (with a kiss?!); for his part the lad is desirous of more grazing on her mouth. Seeing all her armour lying around she suddenly feels vulnerable. Siegfried becomes ever more fervent, declaring that the fire that protected her has now moved into his bosom. He speaks of ardent love, she feels “Angst”. She calms down and sings (to a tune that Wagner used again in his Siegfried Idyll) about her eternal nature, and that she has always been above that sort of thing; so she tenderly asks Siegfried not to spoil everything by overwhelming her. Fair enough, after all, she knew his mother, her half-sister, and Siegfried should be saying “Aunty Hilda, shall we have a nice cup of tea?”. They both lack practise (they are virgins, remember, he having never seen a woman before in his life, and she being his maiden aunt). However, passion floods over them, and they get high on it; their jubilant duet ends in an embrace, with cries of “leuchtende Liebe” (bright shining love) and “lachender Tod” (laughing death) (it’s the Liebes-Tod of Tristan and Isolde again!). She has the choice of ending on top C or an octave below; he has been singing his head off for hours, so he stays an octave or two below her. In Chérau's version, he will actually be above her, that is, on top of her. Sunday 21st of September 2008 at 3 - 7 pm WAGNER: Der Ring des Nibelungen, the stage-festival play, performed as a tetralogy of prologue and three operas (3) Siegfried, an opera in three acts Siegfried................................. Christian Franz Mime...................................... Michael Roider The Wanderer (Wotan)........... Alan Titus Alberich.................................. Hartmut Welker Fafner..................................... Walter Fink Erda....................................... Cornelia Kallisch Brünnhilde.............................. Susan Bullock Woodbird............................... Gabi Gál Hungarian Radio SO/Adám Fischer (recorded in the Bartók National Concert Hall, Palace of Arts, Budapest by Hungarian Radio) I give previews not reviews, but with regard to this series: I like the orchestra and what the conductor Adám Fischer is doing with them; but there is some wobbling and rasping in the voices, making me want to stand right back (one or two rooms away). At this moment I am listening to Wolfgang Windgassen and Birgit Nilsson as Siegfried and Brünnhilde (Solti's Ring), with no worries. WAGNER : DIE WALKÜRERichard Wagner's Valkyrie
Radio New Zealand Concert network Sunday 17th of May 2009 at 3 - 8.25 pm COMPOSER CHARACTERS BACKGROUND UNDERGROUND The meaning of it all ANALYSIS SYNOPSIS STORYLINE LIBRETTO WAGNER: Der Ring des Nibelungen, the stage-festival play, performed as a tetralogy of prologue and three operas WAGNER: Die Walküre The Valkyrie is Brünnhilde, who gives in to human emotions and is left to sleep in penitence on a rock surrounded by fire, with the possibility that a fearless hero might awaken her one day. Brünnhilde..................... Iréne Theorin When the time came, Johan Botha was not able to sing Siegmund. As you can see way down below, we had this one from New York a year ago, with Lisa Gasteen (Australian) Deborah Voigt, Clifton Forbis, James Morris. Die Walküre (The Valkyrie) Act One At the end of the Rhinegold, we saw the chief god Wotan, with his consort Fricka and the other gods, crossing a rainbow bridge and making their way into the celestial castle named Disneyworld, or Walhalla in German. The name could mean the hall with a wall, or else choice hall (Wahl-halle), the abode of the choice people, the elect. However, the divinities were not having it all to themselves: it was to become a retirement home for heroes slain in battle. To transport them on high, Wotan (Woden, Wednesday's child) went down to earth and mated with Earth (Erda,whom we saw warning Wotan to give up the Rhinegold ring), and produced nine warrior maidens known as Valkyries. They would carry the dead heroes on their Pegasus-like steeds to the upper realm, howling and yowling and whoopwhooping as they ascend in their wild ride. We might find the true meaning of Walhalla if we analyse the word Valkyrie, German Walküre, Scandinavian Valkyrja 'slain-chooser' (val, valiant dead; kyr choose) though I still like may idea that it means 'chooser of the chosen'. Anyway, Valhalla is the hall of those slain in battle. When they get to Heaven they are revived, not primarily to drink mead and ale in the banqueting hall (the common misconception) but to form a celestial army. With our hindsight we know that what Wotan really needed was a fire brigade (remember the great conflagration coming at the end of Götterdämmerung). The demi-god Loge (Loki) did not live there, because he was a potential potent arsonist. Wotan was a wanderer (he is called Wanderer in Siegfried), and in spite of being married to Fricka, the patroness of family values (or perhaps he thought that putting other females 'in a family way' was promoting that cause) he went about spilling his..., or, as we now say, passing on his precious genes. Under the assumed name Wälse he fathered a pair of human twins by a woman of the Völsung or Wälsung family: a daughter Sieglinde, and a son Siegmund. They were brought up separately.Young Siegmund was expected to confront the dragon Fafner in his den and bring back the ring; Wotan even placed a sword in an ash tree for him to find. This tree was part of the interior decoration in the dwelling of a hostile man named Hunding (note the hound reference in his name; the canine connection of the twins was that their father was a wolf; no, truly, seriously, they really thought he was). By chance or design, Sieglinde was married to Hunding, and one stormy day Siegmund was on the run (you can hear the tempest and the chase in the brief overture). He burst into the Hunding house exclaiming: Wes Herd dies auch sei, hier muss ich rasten (Whose hearth this 'och' be, here must I rest). He lies down. Sieglinde comes in, thinking her man has come home wanting his dinner, but instead she cries: Ein fremder Mann! (a strange man). She moves closer and closer, talking to herself all the while. Siegmund suddenly begs for 'ein Quell' or two (Quell means 'a well', so he is saying 'Can you please direct me to the nearest drinking fountain). She gives him water from a drink-horn, and he is grateful. She tells him he can have refuge in Hunding's home. He says he is weaponless and wounded, and she immediately wants him to show her his wounds. No, they are only slight, he says. But she now puts meed in the horn, and they share it. He rises to leave, but she urges him to stay. When she asks what he is running away from, he starts on the catalogue of names he applies to himself (having forgotten his real name): Woeful, Doleful, and so on through Act One. Sinister spine-tingling brass chords announce gruff Hunding's arrival, wearing armour and carrying his spear (his horse he leaves in the stall). Get the meal for us men, he eventually orders. Hunding notices the stranger's resemblance to his wife, and in the table-talk Siegmund says he cannot call himself Peaceful (Friedmund) or Joyful (Frohwalt), but Woeful (Wehwalt); his father was Wolfe, and he is a thus a Wolfing, and he had a twin sister. After the guest has told his long story, Hunding realizes that this is the foe he has been pursuing, and, in effect, he challenges him to a duel in the morning. He goes to bed; his wife gives him a sleeping draught. Alone, Siegmund wonders where the sword promised by his father might be, and he notices something shining in the axial ash tree. Sieglinde tells him that at her wedding a one-eyed man came in and put a sword there. Siegmund successfully draws out the blade; she tells him his true name is Siegmund (Victor); they have an extended love-duet; the door bursts opens in tune with their passion and the spring moonlight floods the room. To your brother you are bride and sister; so let the Wälsung blood flourish, are his last words. Hunding's first utterance had been: Let my house be holy to you. And here they are embracing on his floor. Nothing's sacred any more. Die Walküre (The Valkyrie) Act Two The first sounds from the orchestra are the frenzied trumpeting of the sword motif, amid turbulence. The blissful kissful unhappy ill-fated lovers are now on the run; Sieglinde and her twin-brother Siegmund Wölfing Wälsung are fleeing from the outraged Hunding, Sieglinde's unloved husband. We do not see the distressed couple, but we hear their agitation in the music. They are impatiently waiting in the wings until scene three, for fifty minutes, while the gods discuss the morality of their unnatural relationship. We suddenly think the orchestra has turned too many pages and is already into the Ride of the Valkyries of Act 3. But no, Wotan (Woden, Odin) comes into view, wearing armour (or a double-breasted suit) and holding his spear, accompanied by Brünnhilde the Valkyrie, with her helmet, shield, and spear (well, that's how Kirsten Flagstad looked) but some versions might want her dressed differently (as Catwoman, or Wonder Woman, or Maria von Trapp). Wotan tells his beloved daughter to take his son Siegmund's side in the coming combat between the husband and the brother. She leaps from rock to rock (if she is lucky, but they might give her an escalator). Brünnhilde is giving forth her war-cry: Hoyotoho, Heiaha (and a bottle of rum). From her high perch she espies Wotan's consort Fricka, her step-mother (or is Fricka her aunt?), and she warns her father to prepare for a fierce fight himself. Brünnhilde beats a hasty retreat into a cave, with her steed Grane. We don't expect to see the horse, nor the two rams drawing Fricka's carriage. She (presumably being based on Wagner's own wife Minna) jumps straight in: she knows he has been avoiding her, hiding in the mountains (Switzerland, with his rich woman-friend, Mathilde Wesendonck, equivalent to Erda, with whom Wotan had found passionate comfort, and who had given birth to the nine Valkyries). You won't have read all that in any books, because I made it up; but notice the reference to 'Minne's power. (Minne means 'love') in Wotan's lines. Hunding has appealed to Fricka, as the guardian of marriages. (Who is going to cook his meals and bring him his nightcap now?). Wotan says he does not recognize an oath of wedlock if the marriage is loveless. Fricka now launches them into a full-throttled domestic dispute. She pours out her resentment over his sexual relations with a woman to produce the twins and with a goddess to engender the Valkyries. Wotan says she does not understand: the gods need this hero to get the gold and the Ring back. (Beowulf has been at the movies in 2007 and we need to note that Sigemund is the dragon-slayer in that Anglo-Saxon epic; he gains the treasure, including a hoard of rings, not just one.) Wotan and Fricka argue over Siegmund's status as a free agent, if he has a divine father and a magic sword. Fricka eventually wins, and Wotan swears to her that Siegmund will lose; and Brünnhilde will now ensure that Hunding is the victor. Scene 2 Brooding deeply, Wotan tells the story that we already know from Das Rheingold. He adds the details about the origin of the Valkyries (had she never asked him, who is my mother?) and the bad news that Alberich (the Nibelung who had forsworn love to get his hands on the gold) had now fathered a boy in hate through a woman he paid to render him this service; that child (Hagen is his name we will learn ultimately) will get the Ring and bring about the downfall of the gods. Wotan gives his daughter the command to take Hunding's side now, and he becomes angry when she tries to talk him out of it. Scene 3 The lovers arrive; Sieglinde is hysterical and wants to to press on further; Siegmund wants her to rest (I presume they have been up all night). Finally she faints, and he cradles her. Scene 4 Brünnhilde appears (only heroes about to die can ever see her); she tells Siegmund she is taking him to Valhalla. Will Sieglinde come, too? No? Then it's no go. He even threatens to kill Sieglinde with the sword. Brünnhilde is overwhelmed with compassion, and agrees to save them. Scene 5 A gentle scene, then Hunding's horns announce his arrival. The Valkyrie supports her step-brother, but Wotan intervenes, lets Hunding do the foul deed, then kills him, sending him to Fricka with the message of the outcome she desired. And now he is intent on punishing Brünnhilde for her disobedience. A woman has conceived and will give birth to a son, and his name shall be called ... Siegfried. Wagner: Die Walküre (The Valkyrie) Act Three: The wild music we hear is known as 'the ride of the Valkyries', but there will probably be no horses; they will be hiding in the woods, bucking and jostling. The wild place we see (in our mind's eye) is where the nine Valkyries meet, before riding up to Walhalla with the heroes they have garnered from battlefields. Count them. There are only four: Gerhilde (name means the German heroine, or something else), Ortlinde (from the place where linden trees grow?), Waltraute (forest rue?), Schwertleite (leading sword?). Then Helmwige (has a wig under her helmet?) arrives with her catch slumped over her saddle. They all exchange Hoyotoho and Heiaha. Likewise when the others fly in: Siegrune (victory through reading runes?), Grimgerde (Grim Gertie?), and Rossweisse (knows her horses, especially white ones?). They are all wearing full armour, but don't be surprised if they appear in evening gowns at a dinner party, or in miniskirts doing go-go dancing (singing Yohoho and a bottle of rum). One is still missing. Where is Brünnhilde? Here she comes, pursued by Wotan, but that's a living woman her horse Grane is carrying (highly irregular). 'Das ist kein Held!' (That is no hero) Helmwige exclaims (she could be a man hiding under that wig); she is pre-echoing Siegfried's astonishment when he takes the armour off Brünnhilde asleep on her rock ('Das ist kein Mann'). It is Sieglinde, and now that her brother and lover Siegmund is dead, she wants to die; and so she invites Brünnhilde to kill her. She changes her plea when she is told she is bearing Siegmund's love-child. She can hide in the forest, near the cave where Fafner the giant has become a dragon to guard the Rheingold; she will be safe from Wotan there, because he avoids the area. (Wrong, he does eventually go there to confront Mime and Alberich, in Siegfried.) The child will be called Siegfried (listen for his theme resounding on horns). The pieces of Siegmund's sword are entrusted to Sieglinde. There has been a lot of shrieking hysterics, because Wotan is coming, in raging wrath, but Sieglinde becomes ecstatic and cries out thankfully as she leaves: 'O hehrstes Wunder' (O most marvellous wonder). This beautiful tune will lie dormant till the very end of the epic, when it will rise above the sound of the crumbling crashing world to proclaim 'redemption through love'. It only lasts a moment (7 brief bars, fortissimo). Remember it. In both cases it declares to us that Brünnhilde is a wonderful woman. Scene 2 When Wotan comes on, fulminating (with optional lightning and thunder on stage), Brünnhilde has wrapped herself in a huddle of her sisters. He goes on at great length about her treachery and the punishment she shall receive: she will be put into a death-like sleep on the rock, until a man comes along and wakes her, and takes her to his home, where she will sit obediently by the hearth and spin. (That bit never happens; she will be taken to a palace.) The Valkyries flee in terror into the woods, when Wotan threatens the same fate to them unless they avoid her. We are left with two talking heads and a massive orchestra (completely out of sight). According to Wagner's stage directions there could be clasping of knees and farewell kissing of eyes, as the bargaining proceeds, but it is mostly Brünnhilde pleading for mercy and attempting to justify herself. Scene 3 'War es so schmählich was ich verbrach?' (Was what I did so shameful?). So begins a dialogue lasting half an hour (in which she pleads that she was doing what he really wanted her to do) leading to a monologue of Wotan which fills the final quarter of an hour, but the music will sweep us along. Wotan bids his daughter a heartfelt farewell, sets her on the rock, summons Loge to surround it with magic fire, and enunciates a solemn warning: 'Whover fears the point of my spear, never pass through this fire'. WAGNER'S VALKYRIERadio New Zealand Concert network Sunday 14th of September 2008 at 3 - 7 pm (2) Die Walküre, an opera in three acts Sunday 2nd of March 2008 3 - 8 pmWAGNER: Die Walküre, an opera in three acts Brünnhilde..................... Lisa Gasteen Sieglinde....................... Deborah Voigt Fricka........................... Michelle DeYoung Siegmund...................... Clifton Forbis Wotan........................... James Morris Hunding........................ Mikhail Petrenko Metropolitan Opera Orch/Lorin Maazel (EBU) I was led to believe that we would be having our own Simon O'Neill as Siegmund, and I was sure it was his photo on the Metropera website, advertising this opera. DONIZETTI : L'ELISIR D'AMOREDONIZETTI'S ELIXIR OF LOVE
New York Metropolitan Opera Broadcast Radio New Zealand Concert network Sunday 10th of May 2009 3 - 6 pm DONIZETTI: L'Elisir d'amore, an opera in two acts A lovesick peasant boy gets a magic potion from a quack doctor to soften the heart of the girl he loves, and a furtive tear of hers seals their fate. Adina............................ Angela Gheorghiu Nemorino...................... Massimo Giordano Belcore......................... Franco Vassallo Dulcamara..................... Simone Alaimo Metropolitan Opera Chorus & Orch/Maurizio Benini COMPOSER CHARACTERS BACKGROUND UNDERGROUND ANALYSIS SYNOPSIS STORYLINE LIBRETTO The setting is a village (Italian, originally Basque; see Underground for an explanation). This opera comica includes the story of Tristan and Isolde, before Wagner got his hands on it. In this case it is Tristan who procures the love-potion, the philtre, the elixir of love. First let me tell you about the recordings I have. On audio compact disc José Carreras and Katia Ricciarelli (conductor Scimone). On vinyl disc, Luciano Pavarotti and Joan Sutherland (with Bonynge of course) showing off her 'comic talents' as in The Daughter of the Regiment [Penguin Guide]). Who do you think the tenor is on my other disc? No, not Placido Domingo with Ileana Cotrubas (John Pritchard), but Luigi Alva, with Rosanna Carteri (Tullio Serafin), Columbia (1959), made in collaboration with Teatro alla Scala, Milano. In 1832 Hector Berlioz passed through Milan, and went to see the Elixir at the Canobbiana. Yes, he saw it but did not hear it, because the audience was talking, gambling, and eating, while ignoring the action on the stage. Indeed the good citizens of Milano can be very cruel to opera performers, as the stories from La Scala substantiate: poor Maria Callas, and more recently Roberto Alagna (singing Radamès, instead of Nemorino, which he does on the finest version on record [Erato], according to the Penguin Guide). However (don't stop me if you have heard this before, many times) in July 1965 I had a wonderful wonderful (I did not mean to type that twice, but let it stand) afternoon at a matinée performance in Melbourne. I had just finished the seven examinations for the London University M.Th. (it was mainly Hebrew and Aramaic I was doing for it and doing it for, and many months later I was notified of my failure, but all the study stood me in good stead for my future career); and I was taking time out from my Melbourne M.A. thesis (at the end of the year I passed that degree with 1st class honours, and moved on to doctorate studies). So there I was sitting in a cheap seat next to a genial Catholic priest, who assured me that the slim tenor on the stage was Luciano Pavarotti (history not memory informs me that he was wearing blue overalls over a white shirt with a red sash around his waist, in lieu of a white handkerchief, hindsight tells me). He was fresh from his successes in Holland, Switzerland, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Austria, so the publicity was able to state that his ringing tones had been heard in the opera houses of Europe; and now it was Australia, and its opera critics were enthusiastic. John Cargher pronounced him "World-class by any standard" and a "rare thing": "a lyric tenor with volume" (referring to his marvellous voice not his physical size at this stage of Luciano's life), and "an accomplished actor" (so there! but it did become harder for him to achieve this later, when his shape did not suit his roles). Right now I am looking at a monochrome photograph of him in performance as Nemorino, smiling. He was already known in Italy, naturally, and he had substituted for Di Stefano in La Bohème at Covent Garden, and had been Idamante in Mozart's Idomeneo at Glyndebourne, and had sung with Joan Sutherland in Lucia in America; but that tour of Melbourne and Sydney with Joan and Richard Bonynge made his name universal, I dare to say. At last, in 1966, he made his debut at La Scala in Bellini's Capulets and Montagues. He also sang in Verdi's Requiem, and many people (some of them known to you and me) can say that they have sung that with him, in the accompanying choir. Requiesce in pace, Pavarotti. And with regard to the opera, Denis Forman describes The Elixir of Love as a miracle, and enthuses over the pure enjoyment it offers; he awards it a medal inscribed with A+. Radio New Zealand Concert network Sunday 29th of June 2008 at 3 - 5.30 pm DONIZETTI: L'elisir d'amore, a comic opera in two acts DVORÀK : RUSALKANew York Metropolitan Opera Broadcast
Radio New Zealand Concert network Sunday 19th of April 2009 3 - 6.40 pm COMPOSER CHARACTERS SYNOPSIS STORYLINE BACKGROUND UNDERGROUND ANALYSIS DVORÁK: Rusalka, an opera in three acts Rusalka, a water nymph, falls in love with a prince and calls on the witch Jezibaba to make her human, but she is unable to speak. A water nymph (rusalka is the Czech term; not a mermaid, if that species is found only in the sea); her father is Water-Sprite or Water-Gnome. Antonin Dvoràk (1841-1904) composed 10 operas. The only one of them I have (on audio discs) is “The Jacobin”, set in a Czech town in 1793; the term Jacobin was applied to extreme radicals in the French Revolution of 1789, and two of these rebellious types arrive; the basic plot is about an aristocratic father who repudiates his son because of a misalliance, but reconciliation is finally achieved when the intrigues of a cousin are revealed. Another interesting work is “Dimitrij”, the tale of Dmitri the Pretender, a sequel to Modest Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov”(after a drama by Pushkin). Then there is “The Devil and Kate, which involves an excursion into Hell, which turns out to be not at all unpleasant. [1] Anyway, he is worried about his daughter, who is mooning around, in love with the idea of marrying a human prince. She sings about this unnatural desire to the moon (and at this point she is lolling beside the lake and not sitting on her swing, as a woman panelist in the Metropera quiz reported, erroneously, when praising this production). She seeks help from the witch named Jezíbaba (Ann Howard, as the dormitory mistress, apparently; Stephanie Blythe here). Her wish is granted, but the stipulations are that she will not be able to speak, and if the man deceives her they will both suffer eternal damnation. The spell is cast, irrevocably, and the father cries out in anguish. Along comes the prince, supposedly pursuing a white doe, and he senses supernaturalism in the air. They find each other and embrace. Can they sing a love-duet under these circumstances?! He goes off and the family laments. [2] At the palace (or at the place where the action takes place in the fanciful ENO version) the guests are assembling for the wedding of Rusalka and the Prince. He has no name and she has no speech, and I foresee problems at the ceremony. Will you, water-wench (whose name we don’t know), take N(ameless) as your lawful spouse? And all the congregation waits to hear her say ‘I will’, but it never comes. And there is the matter of producing an heir to the throne: what species of offspring could this couple engender? [3] Rusalka wanders by the lake, disconsolate; the witch reminds her of the eternal curse; the prince’s death can save her. He appears, recalling their blissful meeting. He asks her to forgive his unfaithfulness, offers his life for her, and then accepts the kiss of death. |
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