New perspective on late Italian opera - Alfredo Catalani

Alfredo Catalani and Giacomo Puccini, both born in Lucca, four years apart. Everyone knows Puccini. Yet Catalani was a respected composer whose last work, La Wally,  predates Manon Lescaut. Two new publications, editd by David Chandler, bring together all the sources on Catalani for the first time, accessible to English language readers. Our perceptions of later Italian opera are dominated by Puccini. These books add a whole new perspective, on the period and on the way composers' reputations are created.

The First Lives of Alfredo Catalani and Alfredo Catalani : Composer of Lucca  (ed. David Chandler) are reviewed by Robert Hugill here in Opera Today. You'll need both books as they are companion pieces, each built around the two major accounts of Catalani's work.  All the sources are here, evaluated and objectively analyzed. Chandler shows how Puccini's publishers, Ricordi, promoted him heavily, yet Catalani remained highly regarded into the 1930's. Then superficial received wisdom set in, reshaping popular opinion. It's a cautionary tale: we only know what we're taught to know. All the more reason why these books offer an alternative approach bto the period. On the basis of the recording recommendations in these books I've got hold of all the Catalani's CDs I can. Scores are also available. There's more to Catalani than La Wally and more to La Wally than you'd expect.

Also essential reading : David Chandler's superb essay "Bewteen Heaven and Earth" in the London Magazine on La Wally, which is much more than a review of the opera. Also read Chandler's article "Alfredo Catalani: the Great In-betweener"here.  But read the review in Opera Today , get the books and listen to the music!

You might also like my piece on Das Blaue Licht, about a free spirited woman who lives wild in the mountains and has visionary relationships with supernatural forces.  I knew the film long before I knew the opera, but immediately recognized La Wally as part of this Romantic - and particularly Alpine - tradition.

Rigoletto at the movies - why this one's unique

Rigoletto LIVE from the Royal Opera House on Tuesday 17th April at HD cinemas all over the world.  Note, it's "live", which is significant. It's not a rerun of a DVD but as close as you can get to being in the theatre, which for most people in the world is the way it is. There are lots of reasons why people can't go live, but watching live is not like watching at home or to listening to a recording.  Recordings are sometimes treated as sacred relics, but they are nothing more than a moment preserved by technology. Every performance is unique. And live is drama.The current ROH Rigoletto is worth seeing because it is different and opens out new perspectives, even if you know the opera extremely well.  This time the Bad Guy almost steals the show!

 John Eliot Gardiner and Vittorio Grigolo are the reasons. Gardiner isn't constrained by received wisdom of what Verdi should sound like. He knows what the Renaissance was like and understands how Verdi captures that boisterous spirit. Verdi doesn't like the court at Mantua, or even the Church in which Rigoletto places his faith. Gardiner doesn't mistake surface glamour for what's really going on in the music. Verdi is pitting us against the Duke of Mantua and all he stands for.

Grigolo is a megastar but the reason for seeing him is the way he creates the personality of the Duke of Mantua. Good performance is much more than singing. People often mistake persona for person, and assume that a role "must" reflect the person singing it. But the Duke of Mantua is so evil that you're supposed to feel repelled. This is definitely not a role to be sung as romantic hero. Don't be misled by the elaborate bravura displays. Grigolo knows that they're there for show, to distarct from the ugliness within.  It may risk his popular image, but he's doing his job extremely well. Come out of Rigoletto admiring the Duke and you're a fool. Gardiner is the moral force, against which Grigolo's Duke is duelling. Gardiner's vigour and Grigolo's flamboyance are therefore perfectly matched. This is a highly principled interpretation of the opera, which gets straight to its meaning.

Read more about why the HD screening should not be missed HERE in Opera Today. 

Marta Eggerth is 100 and still singing

Marta Eggerth is 100 years old today and still singing. We need to know because she's a living relic, or as the Japanese say "A living National Treasure".  Born in Hungary before the First World War, she was a megastar in 1930's operetta. She appeared in Emmerich (Imre) Kálmán's Czardasfurstin, or Die Herzogin von Chicago  (read my review here). Plus just about all major operettas, musicals and movies she could be signed for. In 1926, she married the tenor Jan Kiepura and together they went on to even greater success. Kiepura and Eggerth are also important to us now because they were artists who moved  freely between genres. No viciousness then about "crossover". Today they'd be pilloried  by media trolls.

Please read two articles, this one from the Washington Post, which is good on her life in New York. "I live in the present", which mentions a new recording by her son with Kiepura, whose name is Marjan (get it?) and the piece I wrote in February with the very rare clip of Eggerth  and Kiepura singing together in 1958 in Kraków . (two music clips). They were a sensation especially because conditions in post-war Poland were harsh. Kiepura and Eggerth were a reminder of how glamorous things were before the war and the Iron Curtain. No wonder their appearance had such an impact!

Below two more clips of Marta Eggerth, one from Kálmán's Czardasfurstin, and two  from a 1933 movie "Unfinished Symphony" about Schubert . Alas that kitsch image of the composer persists today. Below, she sings Ständchen . In the background peasant girls are singing Der Lindenbaum and Heidenröslein. "It's from Goethe" she tells Schubert, who knew already. Both songs were often sung by amateurs and entered the popular imagination as "folk song", which they weren't, originally. The movie sounds like a scream. "Without rhythm, music would be unthinkable" says Schubert. I'll write more later about the film.

Sandrine Piau, Roger Vignoles, Wigmore Hall

Sandrine Paiu and Roger Vignoles teamed up  for the latest concert in Vignoles's "Perspectives" series at the Wigmore Hall.  Piau's background is in the baroque, where the ethereal purity of her voice seems to illuminate the music. Yet she's also passionately involved in 20th century French music, and has worked with innovative ensembles like Accentus.

Piau and Vignoles are a well-balanced partnership, and on the basis of this concert, should work together more often. Piau brings out the best in Vignoles. He was playing with great refinement, as if inspired by her distinctive "white" timbre. Piau's Fauré songs were good, but her Chausson set even better. Her Amour d'antan (op 8/2, 1882) glowed, legato perfectly controlled so lines flowed seamlessly. In Dans la forêt du charme et de l’enchantement (op.36/2, 1898) Piau observes the tiny pauses between words in the first strophe so they're brief glimpses of elusive fairies. Then Piau's voice darkens. The fairies aren't real. "Mirage et leurre", she sings, desolated. Piau sings almost unaccompanied in Les Heures (op 27/1, 1896), Vignoles playing with restraint so as not to break the fragile mood of the song. Hear these again on Piau's recent recording "Après un rêve" (details HERE).

In the more robust Liszt songs,  like Der Fischerknabe, (S292), to a poem by Friedrich Schiller, Vignoles's playing sparkled delightfully, like the waters that seduce the fisherman's boy. "Lieb' Knabe, bist mein!" sings Piau sharply, as the boy is pulled under the waves. Piau's voice maintains its innocence, but the piano with its sharp lunge downwards tells us that it's a malign spirit who drags the boy down. Der Loreley (S273, 1856) is even more dramatic, Piau intoning the word "Loreley"  so you hear the tragedy behind the loveliness.

Piau's 2002 recording of Debussy Mélodies with Jan van Immseel, is still one of the best available. Ten years later, Piau's voice is still fresh. Her Ariettes oubliées (op 22) to poems by Verlaine, was a pleasure. Long, arching lines, thrown out effortlessly in Il pleure dans mon coeur, expressing sadness, tinged with a very French decorum. "Quoi? null trahison? .....ce deuil est sans raison". You feel the smile behind the tears. In Chevaux de bois, Vignoles plays lines that move in circles, while the voice part leaps up and down. The image of a merry-go-round, where wooden horses seem to prance when there's music. "Tournez, tournez", sings Piau with a hint of sorrow, for soon the fair will end. You can hear the chucrch bells toll  in the piano part and guess at what they mean.

Piau sang some of the Zemlinsky and Strauss songs she recorded a few years ago with pianist Susan Manoff.  This time they seemed livelier, perhaps because Vignoles's style differs from Manoff's. This specially benefits Zemlinsky. The brightness of Piau's timbre gives his songs a lift they don't often get. For various reasons, he's not well served on recording. Piau sang Richard Strauss's Mädchenblumen (op 22 1891) with similar grace and charm. Two Poulenc sets rounded off the evening : Deux Poèmes de Guillame Apollinaire (1938) and Deux Poèmes de Louis Aragon (1943). In Allons plus vite and Fêtes galante, Piau demonstrates impeccable diction at breakneck speed. The words busrts out like machine gun fire. Poulenc is taking aim at the complacent bourgeosie, shaking them out of their torpor. In the famous and very lovely song C, Piau and Vignoles are even more moving. "J'ai traversé les ponts de Cé", sings Piau recalling French history flowing like a river. "O ma France! O ma délaissée". France is occupied by the Germans. It's a cry of pain, a dose of harsh reality after all those fairy songs and flowers.

Full review here in Opera Today.

Sandrine Piau is the soloist in a special concert at the Wigmore Hall on 15th October with Ian Page and Classical Opera titled "Ruhe sanft : A Mozart Kaleidoscope". Be there.

 If you liked this concert you would have loved these Wigmore Hall concerts :  Véronique Gens : Massenet, Gounod..... Florian Boesch Die schone Mullerin........Werner Gura Schubert songs .....Sandrine Piau Schubert Transcribed.

More on Butchered Berlin Lulu

At last, a report from someone who knows the opera well and was at the Berlin Barenboim Lulu.  Mark Berry in Boulezian. Read more HERE. Sounds like an experiment, but misguided.

Shocking but perceptive - Herheim Dvorak Rusalka

Stefan Herheim's  Rusalka is magical, capturing the opera's true depths and mysteries. Watch the stream from La Monnaie/De Munt and be prepared to enter the flow, for this is an engrossing approach that takes time to sink in. To Dvorák and his contemporaries, Rusalka and her sisters were not fairies at all. They were ancient nature spirits, the ghosts of women who'd died in shameful circumstances (suicide, murder, abortion, etc), forced to spend eternity seducing mortals and killing them. They inhabit dangeropus waters.. The psychological symbolism's obvious. Fairy tales weren't pretty, but moral parables.

A storm is raging in the overture, rain obliterating the lines of the cityscape. A man struggles with an umbrella, but the winds overwhelm him. A street lady offers him carnations. He's The Vodnik, not depicted as a revolting toad but as a well-dressed businessman. Already, Herheim is making a point. Eventually we'll see The Vodnik destroyed, hair long and lank, a prisoner in the world of mortals. The role is often sketched as caricature, but Herheim shows that The Vodnik had a past, too, from which he can't escape any more than Rusalka can. Notice how little Dvorák gives The Vodnik to sing. Yet he's present in nearly every scene, shadowing Rusalka, trying to warn and save her.  He's by no means an Alberich ripping off Rhinemaidens, but one of them himself. The name is generic for all male Rusalki.

Willard White is such a compelling Vodnik that it's almost as if the role was built around him. A singer and actor of his calibre would be wasted otherwise in this role, but White makes it centre  stage in every way. It's a role for which he'll always be remembered. Watch the way he moves around the other characters who cannot "see" him. It's as if he's shadowing the emotions they feel, undertanding them by moving his body in parallel to theirs. His scenes with Myrto Papatanasiu are particularly tender, but it's his shadowing of the Prince that's most touching. David Pountney's ENO Rusalka suggested unhealthy parent/child sexuality. For Herheim, the Vodnick isn't a dirty old man but a kind of noble savage, who means well but cannot escape the horror of the situation. 

Herheim's approach is strikingly perceptive. To premodern Europeans, Rusalki were part of the ecology, though feared and shunned. In the modern world, who would they be but marginalized figures outside "proper" society. Herheim's set (by Heike Scheele) shows a cityscape, vaguely modern, where details keep changing. One shopfront shows a painting of a sea monster, then displays animated rubber sex dolls, then bridal costumes. Characters take on different roles.The Rusalki themselves, in chorus, are sometimes ladies of the night, sometimes nuns, sometimes "ordinary" people and even, sometimes fairies. Jezibaba is a kind hearted street sleeper who gives the Vodnik flowers. She's not a Rusalki but inhabits the same equivocal position at the edges of society.. Usually I don't like busy stagings, but Herheim uses his symbols with purpose, so each has meaning.

This "city" changes with the light, adapting and elusive, revealing itself slowly. Towards the end, the mortal world disappears altogether. Contrasts of height and horizontals, a pillar rising to link the different worlds, and then disappearing. The whole stage area is used, and the boxes, further unsettling the perspective. Finally we're in Rusalka's world, depicted by swirling mists of green and blue, with moss hanging down from branches above. The Prince (Pavol Cernoch) makes his choice to be kissed and remain there forever. Back in the real world,  dramatic denoument. The Vodnik does something to a woman he can't do to anyone else. As she's wheeleed out by the forensic team, she's revealed as The Foreign Princess (Annalena Persson).  Herheim directs this Rusalka with almost mathematical symmetry, faithfully bringing out the wonders of Dvorák's score, where themes recur and transform. Dvorák writes alarm into staccatos that stab and wrench: one of Herheim's themes is penetration, by knife or by anatomy. Dvorák contrasst grim ostinato with lyrical passages where harps evoke moonlight, beauty and  dare I say - angels. Herheim's nuns sing gloriously but beneath their habits, they wear the fat suits the Rusalki wear when their out of their natural element.  

Rusalka becomes a meditation on womanhood, totally in keeping with Dvorák's liberated appreciation of the women in his own life. Neither Dvorák nor Herheim look down on Rusalka's profession. Seducing and killing is her job. It's only when her feelings are woken that her story becomes tragedy. Jezibaba (Renee Morloc) and the Foreign Princess are depicted as real women, too,with emotions and personality. Just as Herheim shows the depths of the Vodnik's character, we watch The Prince develop from naive sailor to mature adult, who faces his responsibilities and chooses to live ....as a new Vodnik.


When Rusalka was staged (in a different production) at the Royal Opera House this year, Andrew Clements described it as "ugly but not radical".  I didn't like what Morabito aqnd Weiler did either (see my review here) for exactly the same reasons. No real insights at all, though it followed stage directions literally. (Herheim gives up on having the cat force the potion down Rusalka's throat. It's too hard to take it seriously.) Herheim's production may or may not pre-date Salzburg/London,  but it's infintely more perceptive. Herheim accesses meaning and shows just how remarkable this opera is, and how visionary Dvorák really was. Herheim's Rusalka is true to what the compsoer might have intended, and mysteriously beautiful, in its own way.  

Schubert breaks music drought - symphony cycle

You can tell nothing's happening in London when the newspapers send their folks to distant regions or to things that don't usually get covered. But there's a respite from the drought online. Lots of operas - Paris Pelléas et Mélisande, Ariadne auf Naxos, the Munich Eugene Onegin (highly recommended) and Rusalka from La Monnaie which I've watched 4 times so far and enjoyed a lot - review to follow. Schubert to the rescue as usual.

More unusually, Mark Minkowski and Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble are doing a complete cycle of Schubert symphonies on Arte liveweb. This is a major event because Schubert's symphonies aren't often heard as a group together. Most significantly, though, Minkowski and his players aren't normally into the Austro-German mainstream that hangs so heavily on Schubert, who died before late 19th century tradition took hold. Instead, Minkowski approaches Schubert afresh. "Il nous fallait dépasser la difficulté de ces œuvres pour retrouver une forme de jeu, d’amusement.". Brightness, experimentation and the joy of being creative. Even in his bleakest moments that creative impulse didn't desert the composer.

A lot of nonsense is written about period performance, and some by its supporters, but what it really has to offer is energy and agility. Nothing precious about that. Far from being effete, period practice highlights structure and movement - no hiding behind texture for its own sake. Witness John Eliot Gardiner's muscular Rigoletto, which proved to be the surprise hit of the recent ROH production (review HERE)


"La démarche est aussi scientifique : il faut trouver l’édition critique la plus proche du manuscrit, tout en s’interrogeant sur certaines liaisons ou reprises qui peuvent parfois paraître maladroites. De leur côté, les musiciens recherchent les instruments anciens les plus appropriés à ce répertoire. « L’emploi d’instruments d’époque permet de mieux faire ressortir le dialogue entre les cordes et les vents. On peut être surpris par certaines sonorités, par exemple les sons bouchés du cor naturel au début de la symphonie « La Grande ». Ce sont des timbres qui, littéralement, “parlent”. Il est aussi intéressant de noter que le hautbois classique employé ici est très proche du hautbois viennois toujours utilisé dans les orchestres à Vienne. »"

Listen to Schubert's 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th symphonies HERE on arte liveweb. 

Lulu butchered? Berg, Barenboim, Berlin, Breth

Lulu minus Act III/1? Of the 1326 bars in the Third Act, only 87 were not fully notated by Berg, and enough sketched of the remainder to give an indication of his purpose. When I first heard the completion in 1980, I remember being totally perplexed, but that's a measure of just how innovative Berg was. I didn't know beans. But the point is that Berg had pretty firm ideas about what he wanted. The two act version is of historic, not artistic value. So why does the new Berlin Lulu eliminate Act III/1 (Paris)? Read more HERE on parterre box. The "new" Berlin version also cuts the animal tamer's part and adds a spoken text by Kierkegaard. That should set those who hate the third act against those who want to hear what Berg wrote. How much or how little of Berg should we get? Evidently there's a precedent for butchering Lulu, endorsed by his widow, Helene Berg.

Without experiencing the "new" Lulu (cuts by Andrea Breth) it's pointless to judge. For me, though Act III/1 pulls together the private Lulu with the public meta-Lulu and places her story in a wider context. She sells favours, the world operates as prostitution. It's no intermezzo but part of the whole: Berg was obsessed by structure. Leaving out the barrel organ music is vaguely justified, since that was the main passage Berg left incomplete, but evidently he wanted it included. Misguided publicity set millions against the ROH Christof Loy Lulu, but for me it was a penetrating insight into character, deliberately stylized, elusive and challenging. He didn't fool around with the score but used what was there. (More here, here and here) . When it comes to creative expression, hate is a dead end. But I can't get my head round leaving one scene in the third act.

As  I hoped, Mark Berry at Boulezian went to the production. Please read his comments HERE.

Forbidden Music - Richard Tauber and Jimmy Durante

Richard Tauber and Jimmy Durante? In Forbidden Music (The Land without Music) they join forces to capture the popular market. Crossover sinners and singers have always been with us. Paganini was the Lang Lang of his time. Maria Malibran was a sensation at 16, dead at 26, before most singers even begin these days. The modern obsesssion with hating crossover stars says more about bigotry than about music. No one is forced to read the Daily Mail or watch Britain's Got Talent. That Tauber could really sing only makes his participation in commercial kitsch even more  pointed. But those who find fufilment in hate need to sniff out targets to prove how superior they are. Genuinely secure people aren't threatened by others, so why the frenzy?  It's bullying, mob violence by media. Significantly Forbidden Music was written in 1936. "It could never happen in America" cries Jimmy Durante. Oh yes it could.

The principality of Lucca is bankrupt because the natives spend all their time making music, not money. So Austria threatens to invade. (that Austria is mentioned by name is significant too on other levels). So Lucca goes for Lucre and music is banned. Lucca's Economic Miracle attracts International Attention, so a reporter from New York arrives. Jimmy Durante's trademark proboscis looks even funnier when he's wearing early 18th costume. "My giant trunk!" he says, meaning his luggage. Durante's character "Whistler" (pun) pronounces Lucca as "Luck-AH" and mangles local names. But he's no buffoon. He's incensed by repression and supports the locals who want music, even though he's not a musician himself.

Richard Tauber is opera singer Mario Carlini, Lucca's Greatest Export, feted in Vienna. But when he comes home, he's threatened with prison. So concerts have to be organized in secret, through the underground. "There's Revolution in the air!" Even the military are upset. "How can we march without marches?". So Tauber heads a procession of trumpeters, fiddlers and singers who march on the palace. "Let's make music a national industry!" So the Princess (played by Tauber's wife, Diana Napier) reverses the anti-music decree. As if it were so easy in real life. The little opera house opens again and Tauber sings an aria. It's in English, but the sound's so bad and his diction is kaput, so you can't make out the words, but who cares? He does it with a flourish.

Forbidden Music is pretty hammy, certainly not "great art" and no-one had illusions. But as a parable it's a lot sharper than it seems.  It was directed by Walter Forde with music by Oscar Straus (one "s"). Enjoy it here:

Schubert's Lazarus raised

"I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die;  and whoever lives by believing in me will never die".

In Christian tradition, Lazarus was the only person to be raised from the dead (Jesus doesn't count, since he wasn't mortal). Lazarus has been lying in his tomb four days when Jesus arrives. "If you'd been there" reproaches Martha, "he wouldn't have died!" Calmly, Jesus calls "Arise!" and Lazarus, partly decomposed, comes out, still wearing his shroud but alive. Why this miracle and not a billion others? It still confuses me, but faith is mystery.

I'm still high on Schubert after the BBC Radio 3 Schubert week, so here is a complete sequence of Schubert's incomplete cantata Lazarus. oder die Feier der Auferstehung (D 689,1820)  Part of it was lost for decades, and pieces are still missing. But enough has been restored to get an idea of how it might have been. There are two main recordings, the one below from the 1990's conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch and another from 2002 conducted by Helmuth Rilling. Play the whole sequence in 9 parts.

Richard Tauber's camp Pagliacci

Made in the exotic alpine environs of Denham Studios, London,  in 1936/7, Richard Tauber's English language Pagliacci ! Apparently the most expensive British movie made at the time, using a new colour process in some parts, the film lost so much money the company folded. Many involved weren't paid. Bertolt Brecht was although he didn't do anything apart from agree to help. Leoncavallo, Tauber, Hanns Eisler, Brecht and Albert Coates conducting the Boyd Neel Orchestra? The mind boggles. You can see part of the movie on a playlist  HERE.

Easter Cav and Pag streaming

If it's Easter it must be Parsifal,  Bach, and Cav and Pag. New to Medici TV is the Mascagni/Leoncavallo double bill streaming HERE. Violetta Urmana, Vincenzo La Scola, Maria Bayo, Vladimir Galouzine. The production ( I think 2007) comes from Teatro Real in Madrid, conducted by Jesús Lopez Cobos and directed by Giancarlo del Monaco, son of the tenor and stabbed by his wife last year in a drama that could come out of an opera plot, which gives I Pagliacci a poignant edge.

Read more HERE about a really unique I Pagliacci . Hanns Eisler redoes Leoncavallo for the movie, which stars Richard Tauber and was conducted by Albert Coates. "My contribution was nil" said Eisler who needed the money at the time. Brecht was supposed to be involved but didn't get round to it. Imagine that conjuction of different worlds!

Quasthoff speaks in Der Spiegel

Interesting interview with Thomas Quasthoff in Der Spiegel HERE. It's good because the questions are honest and not hagiographic.TQ's replies are revealing.

"SPIEGEL: You yourself have a big mouth, if I may say so.
Quasthoff: That, of course, was always my weapon. I've become quieter now. It's possible to put things very clearly, concisely and sharply, even when you do it quietly."

TQ's also candid about why he doesn't have "fans in the thalidomide community". At least he refused to sing for the company that made the drug. OTOH most people with thalidomide-related problems are not well off as he is, and I don't think they are envious of him. Lots of them are remarkable successes too, in their own way. And as they grow older, they're developing a whole new set of age-related problems like arthritis, and the compensation they received as children has long run out. For them, it's not a closed issue and they could use more public support.

Another pansy comes out too soon

Some of the live Lieder performances last week on the BBC Spirit of Schubert series were unremarkable but Ian Bostridge's Viola D783 was very good indeed, fresher than on his recording with Leif Ove Adnes (which is recommended). Viola isn't an easy song to pull off well, as there are 19 minimally varied rhyming strophes that take nearly 15 minutes to sing. But Bostridge does it sincerely, revealing its delicate sensitivity.

The text is by Franz von Schober, whose songs (like Die Forellen) often have raffish undertones. A snowdrop rings its bell to announce that Spring is on its way. The viola leaps awake, adorned as a bride in "den Mantel sammetblau, Nimmt das güldene Geschmeid, Und den Brilliantentau" (in a blue velvet cloak, adorned with gold and dew like diamonds). But it's not Spring yet. No bridegroom, no sister flowers. The viola hides, ashamed. Soon, roses, tulips, hyacinths and lilies come out in their finery but it's the humble viola whom Spring calls his "favourite child". The flowers are sent to search her out. (How Disney would have illustrated this!) The viola is found,  her head buried beneath her leaves. It's charming, but any gardener knows roses and lilies don't come out til much later. Or walk. Or think about bridegrooms. This is not a nature song!

Be charmed, too by Hugo Wolf's setting of Eduard Mörike's poem Zitronenfalter im April (HERE) and Karwoche, where violets are portents of death (HERE)

Karwoche violets

Easter brings out the pious. Some genuinely so, some by rote!  So here is Eduard Mörike, set by Hugo Wolf. The poem is Karwoche. "O Woche, Zeugin heiliger Beschwerde! du stimmst so ernst zu dieser Frühlingswonne....der Frühling darf indessen immer keimen" Read the full text and excellent translation by Malcolm Wren on Emily Ezust's Lieder Texts site HERE.

Holy Week is the darkest time of the year for the truly devout, who meditate on the meaning of Jesus's death. Yet it coincides with the arrival of Spring. No accident, for Easter and the Resurrection symbolize Spring in a wider spiritual sense. Christian ideas have deep pre-Christian roots. Think Persephone, or the ancient European goddess  Ostara (variants in spelling). Or even Du Liniang, the Peony Pavilion heroine raised back to life by love. (More here - there was a fault on the broadcast site, might be OK now)

Eduard Mörike was a clergyman, but sensitive to pagan nature spirits, and to irony. So he imagines a girl plucking violets for a wreath which will wither on the altar. "Ach dort, von Trauermelodieen trunken, und süß betäubt von schweren Weihrauchdüften, sucht sie den Bräutigam in Todesgrüften, und Lieb' und Frühling, Alles ist versunken!"

The church is filled with music and incense, but around and beneath are graves. The girl is seeking her bridegroom in the vaults of the dead, "and Love, and Spring, all submerged". Hugo Wolf set this poem twice, once as piano song, once fully orchestrated. In both, the final word "versunken" drops sharply downwards, suggesting sudden chill. Perhaps it's the usual Romantic fascination with death, perhaps it's just an acknowledgement that frosts can blitz a promising Spring (as we've learned this week). Mörike and Wolf are saying, "don't count your blessings too soon".

photo : Chris Gunns