ICSM Online Journal > Reviews

Reviewed by Michael Eagleton
(posted 9 August 2005)

‘Rediscovered Music’ is a series of operas being given at the Vienna Volksoper, running from 13 October. There are two new productions – Franz Schreker’s Irrelohe and Emmerich Kálmán’s Die Herzogin von Chicago, and two revivals, Die Vögel by Walter Braunfels and Zemlinsky’s last (and unfinished) work, Der König Kandaules. For those of us who interested in this sort of repertoire, the Schreker has been keenly awaited since news of the Vienna plans became known a year or so ago, for it represents the first complete staging of the work since the Second World War. There was, of course, a production in Bielefeld in December 1985, where the director John Dew took it upon himself to dispense with eight of the thirteen characters, cut almost twenty minutes of music (quite a chunk, since the complete score runs for only just over two hours), and move another slice from Act 1 to Act 3. This did Schreker no favours at all, but a concert performance in the Musikverein in Vienna in March 1989 with the Wiener Symphoniker and a good cast conducted by Peter Gülke was much more successful. The Austrian Radio/Sony CD of that performance is the means by which most of us Schrekerians have got to know the work.

Irrelohe has the curious distinction of being inspired by a railway station. The work in progress following the completion in 1918 of the third of the Schreker ‘big three’, Der Schatzgräber (premiered in Frankfurt in January 1920), was Memmon , to be set in ancient Egypt. The libretto was complete. But in the spring of 1919, Schreker was travelling between Dresden and Nürnberg on an overnight train which stopped at a wayside station – Irrenlohe – whose name immediately sparked off an idea. Memmon was set aside, and a new libretto was completed in just three days. The station, incidentally, is still open, serving a village of that name in the Oberpfälzerwald in northern Bavaria ; but how many, of its inhabitants, I wonder, know that their conflation of ‘flames’ and ‘madness’ made such an impression?

The composition of Irrelohe was a protracted process, for not only was Schreker much involved in the several new productions of his previous operas (in the 1920–21 season there were over 150 performances!), but in October 1921 he left Vienna to take up the position of Director of the Musikhochschule in Berlin. Eventually, the new opera had its first performance on 27 March 1924 , in Cologne , under Klemperer, rather than Frankfurt where its predecessors had been so successful, or in Stuttgart , Dresden or Karlsruhe , all of whom were anxious to gain a Schreker premiere. Other productions followed, eight in all over the next two seasons, but then it disappeared from the repertory.

There is no doubt that the piece was something of a watershed in Schreker’s composing career, though it is not so easy to place it at the end of the beginning, or the beginning of the end. Certainly it was initially well received, but some critics were looking for evidence that Schreker was moving with the times. Remember, Wozzeck was complete, though not staged until December 1925; and Richard Strauss, even, had taken a new direction with the cinematic series of scenes of Intermezzo in Dresden in November of the same year. But while the defining works of the twenties, pieces like Jonny Spielt Auf, Max Brand’s Maschinist Hopkins and the later works of Weill and Hindemith, were some years off, it was the composer of Jonny, Ernst Křenek, who was one of the first to strike out in a new direction. Křenek, of course, was a Schreker pupil, in Vienna and in Berlin , though relations between the two were not always cordial. Křenek’s second opera, Der Sprung über den Schatten was premiered in Frankfurt in June 1924, a ‘farcical comedy’ (the composer’s own description), it inhabits a world far removed from Schreker, with its jaunty syncopated rhythms. There is even a telephone on stage. Ironically, the conductor was Ludwig Rottenberg, who had given Schreker his big break by accepting Der ferne Klang for performance in 1912 and had conducted all his subsequent premieres. Also, the young Křenek was much encouraged by Schreker’s supporter and biographer Paul Bekker.

Irrelohe differs from its predecessors significantly. The subject matter has shifted from sexually motivated fairy-tale fantasy to Gothic horror. The village of Irrelohe is dominated by a menacing dark castle in which resides Heinrich, a seemingly harmless, bookish count whose family history is tainted. The plot, an uncomplicated story of revenge, with a happy ending, has little of the earlier multi-layered symbolism. The result, though, is that the heroine, Eva, who falls in love with the Count and finally marries him, is a somewhat one-dimensional character, being devoid of the emotional drive of Grete in Der ferne Klang or Carlotta in Die Gezeichneten. Heinrich, too, is a stereotype, coming from a long line of angst-ridden characters of the same name through Pfitzner’s Der arme Heinrich to Heinrich Faust. But there are counter-balancing characters to both – the elderly Lola who was raped on her wedding day many years before, and Peter, her son, also in love with Eva, who is in fact Heinrich’s brother. Although the flames which eventually consume the castle and free the family from its curse are textually prepared (by a comic band of fire-raisers), they do not have the same resonance as the ever-present sound imagery of Der ferne Klang. The tale does, though, give Schreker much opportunity for orchestral atmosphere, which is, of course, one of his principal attractions. There is some truly beautiful music here, especially in the lengthy orchestral interludes. At the same time there seems to be a tautness of construction, the excesses of the earlier works being reined in, and often a striking transparency of texture.

The Volksoper production was by Olivier Tambosi, with his regular collaborator, the designer Frank Philipp Schossman (readers may recall their well-defined Jenufa at Covent Garden four years ago in a production borrowed from Hamburg). For Irrelohe there was a single, rather gloomy setting. Lola’s tavern was a courtyard café beneath the castle, whose walls loomed in and out of focus (excellent lighting from Wolfgang Könnyü) and a central space which in Act 1 contained a few simple furnishings denoting Lola and Peter’s room, in Act 2 Heinrich imprisoned with his books (in a cage lowered during the orchestral interlude), and cleared in Act 3 clear for the final dénouement. The production was clear in its delineation of character, though at times fussy in detail, and there were excesses. The narrative unfolded with admirable clarity, but in the weaker moments of the piece Tambosi indulged himself. In the first scene of Act 2, for example, the conversation between the Miller and the Priest about the harvest and the fire at the mill are accompanied by a ritual involving three naked girls with wheatsheaves, seemingly as dreamt by Peter. In the final scene, the action became near-pantomime (surely, the petrol cans were a bit too obvious), to the extent that vital words were lost. And the final duet, full of optimism now that the Irrelohe curse is finally vanquished, was darkened by the fire-raisers reappearing in the background as Nazi brownshirts. But, of course, the future was not quite so optimistic for Franz Schreker.

The conductor was Dietfried Bernet, who knows his way around this type of score and the orchestral playing was superb, ravishing in its detail, and confident in the big moments. Eva was Heidi Brunner, Swiss-born but a regular and popular visitor to the Volksoper after four years as an ensemble member until recently. Her bright soprano, riding the orchestra with beautiful floated lines, was the star of the show. Heinrich, the American John Uhlenhopp, though handsome, of stature was not quite her equal vocally, though their quiet little canonic duet at the end of the second act was nicely done. Christobald, Lola’s one-time lover who takes his revenge, was the character tenor Kurt Schreibmayer, an old hand at the Volksoper, who sounded a little strained. Lola was the Swedish soprano Anne Gjevang, for whom the part could have been specially written.

Irrelohe opened on 16 October, and I saw it at the fourth performance, on 31 October. The next evening I was able to revisit the Volksoper’s production of Walter Braunfels’ Die Vögel. This was new in October 1999, and, popular with the local audience, was revived the next season. The opera was first done in Munich in 1920, conducted by Bruno Walter, who always maintained an affection for the piece, though it disappeared from the repertory after a couple of years, resurfacing again in Karlsruhe in 1971. Braunfels was Director of the Cologne Hochschule, until removed from his post in 1933 for his opposition to the new regime (he refused to compose a Nazi anthem). He spent the war years in seclusion on the Bodensee, and was then reinstated in his Cologne post.

The score is unashamedly Romantic, luminously orchestrated, tonal in its harmonic language, and a feast for singers. One might think, on reading the text (by the composer, roughly based on Aristophanes) and reading of Braunfels’ musical style, that the piece would be cloying, sentimental and indigestible. Not a bit of it. You only have to listen to the opening Prologue in which the Nightingale welcomes you to the bird kingdom, and you are hooked. This production is by the Swedish director Claes Fellbom (who sadly seems to have given up his international career to concentrate on his work at the Stockholm Folkoperan which he founded in 1976). It avoids all the pitfalls of tweeness and over-indulgent costume design and choreography (which is where Yannis Kokkos in his recent Geneva production disappointed, beautiful though it was to look at). The stage is bare, except for a diagonal ramp, lit with (at first) an eerie mauve glow. The bird population is strangely human, so that it does not seem in the least odd that Hoffegut (Good Hope) and Ratefreund (Loyal Friend) should arrive, having left the city to get away from decadence and a broken heart.

The conductor, as at the first revival, was Alfred Eschwé, who has just been appointed to the position of Erster Kapellmeister in a new musical regime at the Volksoper, and on the strength of this performance the house is in good hands. Thomas Piffka and Lars Woldt reprised their roles as the human visitors, as did the delicious Edith Lienbacher as Nightingale. A newcomer to the cast was Yuri Batukov as Prometheus, not quite at threatening in voice as he looked, as he warns the bird kingdom of Zeus’ anger at their daring to defy the natural order which he rules.

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