Zemlinsky - Der Zwerg (Wexford, 2025)

Alexander von Zemlinsky - Der Zwerg 

Wexford Festival Opera, 2025

Christopher Knopp, Chris Moran, Charne Rochford, Eleri Gwilym, Charlotte Baker, Ross Cumming, Victoria Harley, Olivia Carrell, Erin Fflur, Cerys Macallister, Heather Sammon, Eleanor O'Driscoll, Camilla Seale

Jerome Hynes Theatre, National Opera House, Wexford - 23rd October 2025

Strangely, Alexander von Zemlinsky seems to have been one of those early 20th century opera composers who have slipped into obscurity and have yet to gain a true foothold or recognition for their work. That of course was the fate of many German and Austrian composers around the first half of the 20th century, partly through the rapidly evolving changes in music, of which Zemlinsky played an not unacknowledged role, but like many of his contemporaries who fell out of favour with the political establishment, it was mostly due to him being Jewish. Of all Zemlinsky's works Der Zwerg (The Dwarf) appears to be the representative work that he is known for, and in some ways it's a suitable work that defines to a larger extent his character and reputation.

While many of the composers and works deemed Entartete (degenerate) by the Nazis have enjoyed some manner of reappraisal in recent decades, Zemlinsky and Der Zwerg remain largely unknown and rarely performed. It's a work however that fits in perfectly with the new ideals and ideas - both musical and philosophical - that were floating around at the time, particularly in Vienna. Richard Strauss issued in that break with tradition with Salome, but many other works by Schreker, Braunfels and Korngold all explore the darker side of human psychology, a loss of innocence and a recognition of the ugliness and brutality that lies within humanity. Such works are often seen as a sign of the times and somewhat premonitory of the direction of the political climate, albeit dressed up in lush orchestration and extravagantly decadent plots.

The most celebrated and emblematic opera of this period is indeed Richard Strauss's Salome. Based on the play by Oscar Wilde, the Irish-British playwright would prove to be an outspoken figure in giving voice to dark hypocrisy and the depths of depravity in respectable society that were waiting to be given licence to be brought to the surface. Zemlinsky was also drawn to Wilde’s dark fairy tales, composing the short one-act opera Der Zwerg based on The Birthday of the Infanta, to be presented alongside another Wilde work Eine florentinische Tragödie (A Florentine Tragedy). As well as being an expression of those ideas about the ugly side of human nature, Der Zwerg is in some respects also filled with a sense of self-loathing felt by Zemlinsky as someone who didn't fit in with the Germanic ideal, either racially or physically.

The story is about a dwarf who is introduced into the court of the Infanta (an image inspired by Goya’s famous painting) as one of her courtiers. The dwarf however is unaware of how others see him, as he has never seen his reflection in a mirror (other than glimpses of a monster tormenting him in the flash of a blade). Having never seen himself as he is and how he looks, he considers himself a grand heroic figure. He is laughed at and ridiculed by the court, but the Infanta sees him as a plaything, indulging his delusions until he falls in love with her, only for the princess to then cruelly reveal the truth to him. The dwarf dies of a broken heart, clutching the white rose that the Infanta gave to him, but no one really feels any pity for the fool.

The history of the work and the period in which it was composed, 1922, are intriguing, inviting those interested to see in it something of Zemlinsky being rejected by Alma Schlinder, who described him as "a hideous dwarf" and then go on to marry Gustav Mahler. Zemlinsky initially asked Franz Schreker to set The Birthday of the Infanta, for which he would write the libretto (Schreker having already created a dance-pantomime Der Geburtstag der Infantin), but this developed into the similarly themed opera Die Gezeichneten with a libretto written wholly by Schreker himself. What is also interesting is that similar themes about the changing society and its troubling elements were also being explored in another art form, the German Expressionist cinema of Robert Weine's Dr. Caligari (1920) and Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (1922), and that is the direction that director Chris Moran chooses to illustrate this production for Wexford Festival Opera as part of their 'Pocket Opera' programme.

It's a style that works exceptionally well with the nature of the work. Lavishly orchestrated, the story of Der Zwerg has a similar florid quality to Salome without Wilde's Symbolist trappings in that work, the dark fairy tale rather suiting the absurdist Gothic tone adopted here. The production even included flickering silent cinema intertitles, showing the shadow of a Max Schreck Nosferatu-like figure in shadows on the wall to reflect the idea of horror and deformity rather than dwarfism. The court are monstrously panstick painted with heavy black eye makeup and dark lipstick. As with Wilde's story it's all heightened and mannered, matching the sometimes jagged rhythms of Zemlinsky's score performed here in piano reduction by musical director Christopher Knopp.

As with any reduced score production there is no place to hide here and the singers all proved to be more than capable of delivering the intensity of the work, despite the lack of its grand orchestration. Charne Rochford in particular put across the intensity and depth of the dwarf's heroic delusion and fervent love for the Infanta. Eleri Gwilym's Infanta was perfectly characterised and sung, disdainful, detached and self-absorbed but not to the extent that she can't take time to dispense some wilful cruelty to those around her. Charlotte Baker as her attendant Ghita also came across very well as did Ross Cumming as the Chamberlain-storyteller.

There didn't appear to be any attempt to draw any political or personal message out of the work, but Der Zwerg - much like Salome - has its own inner power and horror and works perfectly on its own terms as a strong piece of opera. There is limited opportunity for any ambitious messaging anyway in a reduced small scale production (certainly not the kind of resources seen in the spectacle of Deidamia on the National Opera House main stage the previous night), but yet again, as she demonstrated also with the Pocket Opera production of La tragédie de Carmen in this year's festival, Lisa Krügel's effective set and costume designs were outstanding.

External links: Wexford Festival Opera

Caruso - Lady Gregory in America (Wexford, 2024)

Alberto Caruso - Lady Gregory in America

Wexford Festival Opera, 2024

Alberto Caruso, Aoife Spillane-Hinks, Erin Fflur, Jane Burnell, Henry Strutt, Bríd Ní Ghruagáin, Deirdre Higgins, Holly Teague, Helen Maree Cooper, Lawrence Gillians, Christian Loizou, Gabriel Seawright, Michael Ferguson, Henry Grant Kerswell, Davide Zaccherini, Cathal McCabe, Vladimir Sima

Jerome Hynes Theatre, National Opera House, Wexford - 24th October 2024

Despite her importance as a major figure in the history of Irish drama, Lady Augusta Gregory is not a name that will mean a great deal to most people. Even in Ireland where her plays are also rarely performed, her name and contribution to Irish culture - and indeed politics, the Irish language and the country's folklore - is perhaps only really appreciated by those involved with the theatre. Mention Dublin's Abbey Theatre or the play The Playboy of the Western World and a much wider public will know of their significance, yet Lady Gregory is inextricably linked to both. For that reason if for nothing else - not least the almost total erasure of women’s historical contribution to the arts in Ireland - Lady Gregory is a name that deserves to adorn an opera, and Colm Tóibín working again with Alberto Caruso after the success of their previous opera for Wexford in 2022, The Master, duly obliges but perhaps doesn't quite hit the mark this time.

Along with W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory was one of the co-founders of the now prestigious Abbey Theatre in Dublin and was involved in the controversy that arose when J.M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World was first performed there in 1907. The play itself contributed to the status - not to mention the notoriety - of the theatre, for daring to present works that challenged or were seen as challenging the power of the Catholic Church who denounced the play as immoral and "mocking the purity of Irish women". Lady Gregory was not at the Abbey when the controversy, protests and riots erupted, but she did bring the play - and the uproar surrounding it - to America in 1911, where it was presented with the former President Roosevelt in attendance.

It's this aspect of her career that Colm Tóibín chooses to represent the significance of Lady Gregory's contribution to Irish art and culture in Lady Gregory in America. While choices have to be made out of necessity for the sake of dramatic presentation, omitting large proportions of her life, literary, theatrical and cultural achievements for the sake of finding an all-encompassing episode that reflects on her character and personality, there is a sense nonetheless that the opera is more interested in the cultural phenomenon of Synge's The Playboy of the Western World. Whether that does sufficient justice to Lady Gregory, it is a work that nonetheless does represent an important landmark and change in how Ireland would choose to represent itself to the world, and Lady Gregory was very much a part of that sea change.

As far as it is depicted in the opera, the troubles in bringing the play to America begin even before the theatre group leave Ireland. Anyone associated with the play, denounced by the Church as immoral and blasphemous with its use of bad language and referring to ladies wearing “shifts”, places their immortal soul in peril, and Mrs Kerrigan is not going to let her young son be part of it, playing that boastful murderer, Christy Mahon. The formidable Lady Gregory sees off any opposition however and young Kerrigan is won over by the promise of the delights of the tongue of Molly Allgood, who is to star opposite him as Pegeen in the play, so Kerrigan's mother disguises herself and sneaks into the Abbey Players performing Widow Quin to do what she can to prevent it being performed.

She need hardly have worried, as the reputation of the play is already known in New York, the audience primed to respond with shouted abuse, the throwing of stink bombs, rosary beads and holy water. This just isn't the kind of romantic view of Irish that the Americans want to see. Why couldn't they just do a nice play about girls saying prayers and boys playing hurling? When they arrive in Philadelphia, the nerves of the company are shattered and Mrs Kerrigan is ready to play her hand, warning the police that they have a duty to arrest anyone who utters the scandalous use of the word "shift" or should a lady actor dare to show an ankle. Arrests are made, the case only dismissed due to the intervention of the lawyer John Quinn, a friend and admirer of Lady Gregory.

Although likewise premiering in Wexford as a 'Pocket Opera', the setting and musical treatment of Caruso and Tóibín's previous work The Master, based on the life of another major literary figure Henry James, felt like a true opera, bringing an insightful melancholic beauty and tragedy to its subject. For Lady Gregory in America however Tóibín chooses to represent this episode as a something of a farce, playing the outdated religious notions of propriety from 100 years ago as something laughable. And indeed they would be farcical if they weren't so serious and had real implications for Catholics in Ireland, which were particularly oppressive towards women. The Playboy of the Western World was an important work for changing or at least challenging those attitudes, but it's the choice to present this as a wholly comic episode that fails to do justice to both the play and Lady Gregory's role in the greater scheme of things.

While Erin Fflur is excellent in the role of Lady Gregory, her role as a principal is somewhat downplayed then, the focus rather turning to young J.M. Kerrigan and Molly Allgood. There is definitely something worth exploring there in how it reflects the challenges facing young people and the changing times, the relationship between them blooming when removed from the oppressive society back home. It's there indeed that the lyrical qualities of Caruso’s score come to the fore and this central transformation is extended to the rest of the troupe, the police officers and even Kerrigan's mother finding love with the judge she tried to influence to lock them all up. The central theme then becomes one that gives love and the freedom to choose who we love as the engine for great social change.

Lady Gregory in America however doesn't have the lyrical quality of Caruso and Tóibín's previous work to allow for such reflection. The larger part of the opera is played for laughs and feels like light opera or even a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, with jaunty rhythms and chanted repetition of mocking absurd phrases. It makes for a very enjoyable light opera certainly, tightly scripted, Tóibín providing plenty of exposition and never taking it all too seriously, but in doing so it fails to give us anything of any great depth or insight into the reality of the times. Of course that's easy to say when the attitudes are in the past (although some have persisted and have held influence up to not so long ago) and easier to make fun of how absurd they seem now, but it does make light of how difficult and necessary it was to challenge those ideas.

With much of the libretto being delivered Sprechstimme fashion, and the focus being on comedy rather than seeking to find any lyrical content, there is a sense that Lady Gregory in America would work just as well or better as a play. There is little here that gains any deeper meaning through the musical setting. When Alfredo Caruso, taking on the duties of music director and orchestra with solo piano accompaniment, is allowed to delve a little more into the relationships that develop - Lady Gregory inexplicably being largely neglected on that front, her relationship with John Quinn not really developed - the opera does gain a little bit more of a sparkle. 

The singing performances contribute to that also with excellent singing from all the leads. Lady Gregory, not as imperious as you might expect considering the role she assumes here, is nonetheless well characterised and sung by Erin Fflur. There is a mighty performance from Henry Strutt as J.M. Kerrigan and the duets with Jane Burnell's Molly Allgood are quite special. The comic tone of the work however presents a wonderful opportunity for Mrs Kerrigan to lead the way and Bríd Ní Ghruagáin almost steals the show with a very entertaining and superbly sung performance. As with The Master in 2022 in the small Jerome Hynes Theatre at National Opera House in Wexford, the production flows wonderfully from scene to scene, this time under the direction of Aoife Spillane-Hinks. Not a great opera, Lady Gregory in America is an enjoyable enough entertainment based on a worthy subject, but its treatment is not one to make a sufficiently lasting impression.

External links: Wexford Festival Opera

Cellier - The Spectre Knight (Wexford, 2022)

Alfred Cellier - The Spectre Knight

Wexford Festival Opera, 2022

Gioele Muglialdo, Sinéad O'Neill, Thomas Bennett, Monwabisi Lindi, Grace Maria Wain, Erin Fflur, Jennifer Lee, Matthew Nuttall

Wexford Arts Centre - 2nd November 2022

Alfred Cellier's The Spectre Knight proved to be an ideal way for me to start this year's Wexford Festival Opera, the essential place to go every year if you are an opera lover. There you will be guaranteed to see and hear rare works that often haven't been performed in over a century, and almost invariably find that these works are more than worthy of being staged again. Aside from the larger scale works on the main stage, you will find much of interest - and rarity - in the 'pocket opera' performances. And as such we got the opportunity to see Cellier's The Spectre Knight, a 'Fanciful Operetta in One Act', of which no recordings exist, a light and entertaining one-hour piece staged here with much love, care and attention, brightly directed and performed.

Cellier was a contemporary of Gilbert and Sullivan, conducting many of their works and even collaborating later with W.S. Gilbert on The Mountebanks. The Spectre Knight indeed was even first performed as a 'curtain raiser' for Gilbert & Sullivan's Sorceror in 1878, and it plays that part very well. It's not a work that is going to upstage any main act, but within its modest runtime and ambition, it is not unexpectedly filled with bright little melodies and light humorous situations, and even one or two surprising elements, references and allusions that give it a little more character.

The plot of the operetta owes much to Shakespeare, establishing a situation similar to The Tempest, where a Duke banished from his kingdom is living with his daughter in exile, in an enchanted glen supposedly haunted by the Spirit Knight. They aren't entirely alone, the Lord Chamberlain also residing with them and two servants who tend to drink a lot. There are however no young men, much to the disappointment of the Duke's daughter Viola, who has never even seen a young man. Just for added realism, there were no young men in the audience at the Wexford Arts Theatre either. 

It all seems a little bit dubious however when Viola's cousin Otho appears (a 'distant cousin' he hastens to remind us), looking to deceive and take advantage of an innocent young woman who has never met a young man, let alone a handsome one like Otho. He disguises himself first as a friar to put some ideas into her head, grooming the suggestive Viola. Then he disguises himself as the Spectre Knight and, through the telling of his sad fate, manages to win the approval and admiration of all. Viola however is not entirely convinced, even when Otho admits who he is. In truth, Otho has loved Viola for a long time and has come to tell the Duke that his kingdom has been restored. Happy news for everyone.

The Spectre Knight is delightfully played with some updated dialogue and contemporary references by director Sinéad O'Neill, keeping it very much in the spirit of Shakespeare's comedies. There is maybe not a lot that stands out musically in the piano score reduction played here by Gioele Muglialdo, but are certainly plenty of bright tunes that keep everything moving along. A few other melodies from Verdi (Brindisi from La Traviata), and Mozart ('La ci darem la mano' from Don Giovanni) are inserted, although it's not clear if those were there in original or included here for fun, but it's telling that they don't feel out of place. The set was colourfully dressed and creatively directed to make use of the limited space, making this feel fully staged.

Brightly played and brightly sung, played for laughs and played for fun it's hard to fault this on any level. Not only do we get the chance to see and hear some pleasant musical theatre, well-staged and performed, filling in forgotten gaps in musical history, these 'pocket operas' also provide an opportunity for many of the excellent ensemble of young singers who contribute elsewhere to the chorus and supporting roles in the main stage opera to show their singing and performing talent in small principal roles. Jennifer Lee was a charming Viola to Thomas Bennett's Grand Duke and Matthew Nuttall's not at all creepy Otho/Friar/Spectre. Even in the smaller role of the Lord Chamberlan, Monwabisi Lindia managed to confidently deliver Verdi's Brindisi and Grace Maria Wain and Erin Fflur were hugely entertaining as servants/ladies of the court.

Links: Wexford Festival Opera