Queen Elizabeth Hall
Lora – Elisabeth Meister
Ada – Kirstin Sharpin
Zemina – Eva Ganizate
Farzana – Emma Carrington
Drolla – Michelle Walton
Arindal – David Danholt
Gunther – Andrew Rees
Morald – Mark Stone
Gernot – Andrew Slater
Fairy King, Voice of Groma –
Piotr Lempa
Harald - Ben McAteer
Messenger - Mario Mansillo
Chelsea Opera Group Chorus (chorus master: Deborah Miles-Johnson)
Chelsea Opera Group Orchestra
Dominic Wheeler (conductor)
Wagner’s attempts to have his
first completed opera staged were to no avail; the interested reader may
consult his autobiography, Mein Leben,
for his own account. Eventually staged in Munich in 1888, five years after the
composer’s death, it would not be staged in Britain until 1969, under the
auspices of the Midland Music Makers Grand Opera Society. The Chelsea Opera
Group, as is its custom, gave the work in concert, though I shall be fortunate
enough to see Die Feen staged next
month in Leipzig. It is a splendid work, far from perfect and at times
immature, but far superior to a number of works, and indeed entire œuvres that continue,
bafflingly, to hold the stages of many opera houses. For the Wagnerite, and
indeed for those with any interest at all in musical history, there is
considerable additional pleasure to be derived from the parlour game of identifying
both the many influences upon the work and the ways in which it offers a true
starting point for Wagner’s subsequent explorations.
Let me hand over for a moment
to Wagner, writing in Mein Leben:
While
I had written [the incomplete, preceding] Die
Hochzeit without operatic embellishments and treated the material in the
darkest vein, this time I festooned the subject with the most manifold variety:
beside the principal pair of lovers I depicted a more ordinary couple and even
introduced a coarse and comical third pair, which belonged to the operatic
convention of servants and ladies’ maids. As to the poetic diction and the
verses themselves, I was almost intentionally careless about them. I was not
nourishing my former hopes of making a name as a poet; I had really become a
‘musician’ and a ‘composer’ and wanted simply to write a decent libretto, for I
now realised nobody else could do this for me, inasmuch as an opera book is
something unique unto itself and cannot be easily brought off by poets and
literati.
And so of course, it would
continue, Wagner writing all of his own musico-dramatic texts, even though in
this instance he reworks – should that not be too modest a verb – Carlo Gozzi.
One may trace a multitude other continuities or presentiments, not least the
idea of the forbidden question, albeit the other way round from Lohengrin, at least in terms of gender,
Ada, the half-fairy, half-mortal, having agreed to marry Arindal, the King of
Tramond, with the condition that he never ask her who she is. Die Feen, however, is no tragedy, for,
after inevitably having asked the question, had Ada disappear, and followed
here to the underworld, where, Orpheus-like (a tribute to Wagner’s beloved
Gluck?), he restored her to life with voice and lyre, Arindal gains immortality
and joins Ada in the land of the fairies. Immortality would, of course, become
a curse or chimera to the later, Feuerbachian Wagner: think of Wotan. Here, however,
the trials he must undergo both recall The
Magic Flute and presage Die Frau ohne
Schatten. That is not, of course, to say that Die Feen itself is a crucial link between Mozart and Strauss,
though Wagner certainly is, but rather to remind oneself that so many of the
ideas on which German and indeed other dramatists draw are part of common
currency, not least that of the resolutely unsentimental fairy tale, as in the
present case. And then, there is Arindal’s hallucinatory Wild Hunt, which
cannot but make one think of Gurrelieder.
I could go on and on about
the ‘dramatic’ content, but ought at least briefly to say something in similar
vein, if equally selective, about the music. For instance, there is a
second-act figure that naggingly anticipates Tristan, and the choral writing certainly at times looks forward to
Tannhäuser and Lohengrin. Looking back, Weber,
Marschner, and only slightly less, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Schumann loom
large in the general music language, this being a more unalloyed ‘German’ opera
than either of its two immediate successors, Das Liebesverbot and Rienzi,
though the Italian and French influences upon those works have often been
exaggerated. But in any case, the broader point is that, for Wagner at this
time, standing firmly in a dominant tradition of eighteenth-century German æsthetics,
perhaps the key to understanding ‘German art’ was its power of synthesis,
overcoming merely ‘national’ styles to progress, in his later Zurich ‘reform’
language, toward the universal.
Sadly, this performance was
let down severely by the orchestra. Whilst it may not yet possess the Greek
choral role of Wagner’s mature music dramas, it is nevertheless fundamental to
the drama as a whole. Here, however, the players proved for the most part quite
unequal to Wagner’s exacting demands. The first act suffered most, the strings
in particular often painful to listen to, each desk apparently playing
according to its own unique and highly variable system of temperament. Rhythm
was little more of a strong point; indeed, at one point, Dominic Wheeler had to
re-start proceedings, a wise split-second decision, which one did not envy him.
In the circumstances, his direction of proceedings was not bad at all, though
it could not be said that he boasted any especial insights. Ideally this music
requires the advocacy of a great Wagner conductor, though very few have deigned
to perform it, the late Wolfgang Sawallisch an honourable exception. Still, it
seemed as though whatever Wheeler said to the orchestra, or at least to the
strings, during the first interval paid off somewhat, for horrors were fewer as
the work progressed. However, some truly dreadful woodwind and horn playing
marred the beginning of the third act. At least the choral singing, whilst
sometimes a little fuzzy and underpowered, stuck for the most part to the right
words and notes.
There was a degree of
tentativeness to some of the solo singing too, again most obviously in the
first act, where one sometimes had the impression of relatively early rehearsal
run-through. I later had it on good authority, however, that the soloists only
received their scores two weeks prior to the performance; if that be true, one may
appreciate their predicament, and deplore the situation. If there were often,
though by no means always, a sense that greater familiarity with the score
would have been of considerable assistance, there were no especially weak links
in purely vocal terms. The smaller roles were in general well taken, Mark Stone
impressive as the courtier, Morald, and Piotr Lempa splendidly stentorian in
the small roles of the Voice of Groma the magician and the Fairy King; I should
not be surprised to hear him in the future as a big-stage Commendatore, even a Fafner. Kirstin Sharpin’s Ada improved appreciably as
the performance progressed; if vocal strength is intermittent at the moment, it
is nevertheless present and will doubtless develop. Elisabeth Meister’s voice
and dramatic presence are already the real thing; hers was undoubtedly the star
turn of the evening. Not only did her voice stand head and shoulders above the
others during ensembles, her dramatic commitment as Lora, Arindal’s sister, could
be sensed and indeed seen throughout. At his best, David Danholt offered a
tenor of impressive heft and no little tenderness. There were, however, times
when he seemed a little uncertain and when his contribution petered out,
perhaps out of tiredness.
Better than nothing, then,
especially when nothing is what we have had for far too long. However, a
rarity, even when its rarity-value is so thoroughly undeserved, often needs
particularly talented advocacy, which in this case was at best fitful. Perhaps, in these circumstances, the cuts were not entirely ill-advised.
