Schreker - Der singende Teufel (Bonn, 2023)

Der singende Teufel - Franz Schreker

Theater Bonn, 2023

Dirk Kaftan, Julia Burbach, Mirko Roschkowski, Anne-Fleur Werner, Tobias Schabel, Dshamilja Kaiser, Pavel Kudinov, Carl Rumstadt, Tae Hwan Yun, Boris Beletskiy, Ava Gesell, Alicia Grünwald, Wooseok Shim, Hyoungjoo Yun

OperaVision - recorded 19th May 2023

The early twentieth century operas of Franz Schreker tend to be drenched in gothic horror and symbolism, heightened with lush beguiling orchestration that does tend to date them somewhat, aligning them with the likes of Marschner's Der Vampyr than with the more experimental direction music was to take under Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School around that time. Although there is a lot of silliness and dubious psychology in the self-penned libretti of Schreker's operas, there are nonetheless deeper issues that can be found underlying the melodrama, the folk tale treatment no less a valid means of touching on fundamental human questions than Wagner's explorations of legend and mythology.

That's not to say that Schreker comes close to what Wagner achieved in his works, but there is nothing inherently wrong with the method, and it can provide interesting insights when directed with attention to the subtext. Not that you get many opportunities to see Schreker's work performed. Two major works Die Gezeichneten and Der Schatzgräber are occasionally revived, others rarely, some almost never. Schreker's legacy has been affected of course to a large extent with him being a Jewish composer banned by the Nazis as well as the changing face of music at the turn of the 20th century, but some recent revivals of those rarer works have proved the value of his work sitting alongside other largely neglected German and Austrian operas from this period, where only Richard Strauss seems to have survived beyond the shadow of Wagner and the War.

Der singende Teufel, 'The Singing Devil', is a real rarity, one of those 'almost never' works, with not even a full recorded version of the opera out there. From the opening scene, portentous in his high drama and ominous in its symbolism, the familiar characteristics of a Schreker opera from Der ferne Klang up to Irrelohe which preceded it are all there to see. In some kind of fantasy Middle Ages setting, Amandus, an organ builder, is proud of the completion of work on his latest piece. The local priest Father Kaleidos however warns him that the magic organ that was father's legacy still needs to be addressed. Created to produce heavenly music, instead the monster organ emits only unearthly demonic sounds. His father went mad, but the organ remains and must be fixed to inspire others towards God.

Meanwhile in the cave of the Priestess Alardis, a pagan gathering chooses Lilian as their emissary to challenge the authority of the church. They want her to seduce Amandus, who they consider a fool and call "the monk". Somewhat deliriously, Amandus gets caught up in the pagan parade, seeing it all as some kind of mad dream brought on by proximity to the organ, but Alardis, Lilian and a drunken knight Sir Sinbrand pose a very real threat. In the ensuing struggle, Amandus is challenged by Sinbrand to a duel as he attempts to protect Lilian. The priest rescues Amandus and urges him to use the organ to repeal the pagan attack.

Schreker's previous opera Irrelohe seemed to mark a conclusion to the composer's neo-Romantic period, Der singende Teufel moving into the post-Romantic, but although there is less extravagant orchestration, musically as well as in terms of subject matter it remains very much in the individual idiom of the composer. The Theater Bonn production emphasises the personal themes in the work with a subtle change of Amadus from an organ maker to a musician who is striving to perfect his art. Decadence being a characteristic of Schreker's work, there seems - again like Der ferne Klang - to be special pleading in the tradition of Tannhäuser for the artist being unrestricted by traditional laws and morality. The symbolism of the organ is evident and even explained at the start of Act III. "The organ is like a person fulfilling tasks, controlled and guided by the soul. The bellows correspond to the lungs, the pipes the throat ...the soul the wind that sweeps through the bellows ..." It's about the battle for the soul of man, which competing religions think is their preserve, but it is the artist who reflects the better nature of man, or the fullness of nature, his art created under the spell of his own suffering.

Although it is somewhat overheated and dubious in its philosophy, it's not the subject or the music that present difficulties with Der singende Teufel as much as the often impenetrable and nonsensical utterances of the characters in the libretto. Aside from the theme outlined above, it doesn't really have a great deal else to say. It's easily reducible to 'good versus evil', not unlike his rather more entertaining final opera Der Schmied Von Gent. What this one amounts to, with the arrival of a pilgrim at the conclusion, is a round dismissal of all religions, where a belief in God is shown to be predicated upon the furthering of their own interests. Schreker, not unlike in Irrelohe, sees only one way out, which is destroying of such dangerous and inhibiting beliefs, an eradication of the old ways. The burning of the monster organ by Lilian brings a beauteous sound.

Evidently a great deal of the success of putting on a Franz Schreker opera and dealing with its more problematic questions and ideas rests with the production and the performances. The director Julia Burbach plays to the strengths of the work, such as they are, as a colourful entertainment with dramatic conflicts in the contrasting and opposing forces of good and evil. There is still plenty of symbolism there for you to pick apart or you can just enjoy the beauty of Schreker's score and choral arrangements. The transforming of Amandus as a musician helps bring Schreker's own personal experiences into the production, making it perhaps a little more meaningful, and Burbach introduces her own symbolism with 500 empty seats forming a cage and pages of music score scattered around to reflect Schreker’s preoccupations as the artist protagonist. Dancers also bring the conflict within the music to life.

The singing is good or at least adequate for the most part. The roles of Lilian and Amadus have their challenges in terms of the size of the roles and the dramatic expression of their individual torments, but both tough central roles are performed well. Mirko Roschkowski has that high light lyrical tenor role with a little bit of steely strength that is needed for this kind of role and convinces entirely as Amandus. Anne-Fleur Werner is a little light in places but brings commitment and intensity to the role of Lilian. Tobias Schabel sings the Priest well, Pavel Kudinov is good as Sir Sinbrand, Dshamilja Kaiser a little on the weak side as Alardis, but is often set against choral singing which can be hard to rise above. It looks like Theater Bonn used stage microphones rather than radio mics for this streamed recording on OperaVision, so it would be difficult to give an accurate account of the singing, but this is definitely a good overall production of a rare Schreker work.

External links: Theater Bonn, OperaVision

Goldschmidt - Beatrice Cenci (Bregenz, 2018)

Berthold Goldschmidt - Beatrice Cenci

Bregenz Festival, 2018

Johannes Debus, Johannes Erath, Christoph Pohl, Dshamilja Kaiser, Gal James, Christina Bock, Per Bach Nissen, Michael Laurenz, Wolfgang Stefan Schwaiger, Sebastian Soules, Peter Marsh

C-Major - Blu-ray

One of the complaints that is often made about German and Austrian composers in the immediate post-Wagner era of the first half of the 20th century, is that the music and subject matter had lost any kind of bearing or connection with the reality on the ground. The bizarre decadent fantasies of Franz Schreker's Irrelohe and Die Gezeichneten, Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten or Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane all take place in fantasy worlds with seductive extravagant orchestra arrangements that seemed to bear little relation to what was happening in the world outside, but perhaps in some way they do have relevance, even if it was just an escapist reaction against the growing influence of the National Socialists.

Berthold Goldschmidt, like many other German Jewish composers of this period had to do more than retreat into fantasy worlds but were forced into exile, their works soon banned by the Nazis as Entartete "degenerate music". Like those other composers, one wonders what music was subsequently lost and how it might have developed, Goldschmidt having composed only one opera Der gewaltige Hahnrei (1932) when he fled Germany in 1935 to come to England where he worked as a music director for the BBC. Beatrice Cenci, belatedly coming in 1950 while in exile gives some indication of the kind of opera work Goldschmidt might have developed, and what might otherwise have been lost.

Beatrice Cenci however might well have also been lost, the prize-winning work rejected by Covent Garden in 1950, the music of the such composers (Goldschmidt having studied under Franz Schreker) no longer fashionable at that time. The opera only received its first concert performance in 1988 and its first fully staged performance in 1994. With a renewed interest in rediscovering work from the Entartete school of composition and DVD releases giving them a wider audience (like the recent Naxos release of Korngold's extraordinary Das Wunder der Heliane), it's clear that there still are many fascinating and worthwhile discoveries to be made.

The striking Bregenz Festival production of Beatrice Cenci is certainly something of a revelation in terms of presentation and performance of this rare work. The opera itself takes something of its character from Schreker's Die Gezeichneten in terms of how it presents the decadent court of Count Francesco Cenci like the island of depravity of Alviano Salvago. Cenci likewise enjoys the favour of the Pope, with notable members of the clergy taking part in his outrageous orgies, protecting him from any censure. When Cenci's own daughter Beatrice becomes the innocent victim of his depravity, she asks Orsino, a young novice priest that she is in love with, to intercede on her behalf. Orsino arranges for the murder of Francesco Cenci.

Based on a notorious real-life historical event, Beatrice and her stepmother Lucrezia were condemned to death in 1599 for the murder of Count Cenci - Beatrice's execution by beheading in Rome incidentally witnessed by Caravaggio who may well have relied on the imagery for his gruesome painting Judith Beheading Holofernes. The legend of Beatrice Cenci however has influenced many writers and composers, notably Percy Bysshe Shelley, whose 1819 verse drama The Cenci was adapted by Goldschmidt for the opera.

Johannes Erath's 2018 production for the Bregenz Festival respects the musical approach the Goldschmidt employs, crafting a colourful and stylised drama to match the extravagant Mahler-like orchestration and the bel canto like flourishes that Goldschmidt was striving to achieve. It consequently does come across as a strange blend between Schreker's Die Gezeichneten and Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia, which only highlights the delirious dreamlike quality of the chromatically untethered music, a swirling madness gradually enveloping proceedings, whether describing the decadence of Francesco Cenci, or the disturbed mindset of his abused daughter.

In contrast however to other elegant fantasies of the so-called Entartete degenerate composers, Goldschmidt's Beatrice Cenci has a foot in the real-world at the same time as it pays tribute to the beatification of the legend of Beatrice. It's about innocents having to stand up to evil and become victims in order to achieve some kind of redemption later for their sacrifice, and Erath's production also emphasises the tragedy this represents for the powers and institutions, with only a glimmer of fragile light at the end that might prevail. If we can see that in Beatrice Cenci perhaps then we can begin to see similar qualities in other such works from this school of rejected/lost opera that has been too easily dismissed and forgotten.

The performance at Bregenz is fantastic, particularly Gal James who does indeed adopt an otherworldly-like character through her lyrical and dramatic singing and performance as Beatrice, combining bel canto agility with a robust delivery. There are good performances here too from Christoph Pohl as Francesco Cenci and Dshamilja Kaiser as Lucrezia. Johannes Debus conducts the Wiener Symphoniker with a measured delivery that suggests a nightmarish dreamlike quality that is gradually spiralling into madness. Similar visual references can be found in Katrin Connan's impressive set designs.

The colourful production comes across with crisp clarity on the HD Blu-ray release from C-Major. The High Resolution soundtracks in LPCM 2.0 and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 present a powerful and detailed recording of the music and singing performances. Although initially composed with an English libretto, the Bregenz production uses the German version that the composer prepared. There are no extras other than booklet notes and a synopsis. The Blu-ray disc is all-region and has subtitles in English, German, Korean and Japanese.