Schubert: Fierrabras

Opera 54

Schubert: Fierrabras

Soloists

Chamber orchestra of Europe

Claudio Abbado

Schubert was a prolific composer of operas - there are a least a dozen of them although the exact number depends on how you count incidental music and unfinished works. Fierrabras was his last completed opera but it was not performed until 1897.

Given the sense of the dramatic that Schubert brings to his songs it is perhaps a surprise that he didn’t establish himself as an opera composer. There is some lovely music here but somehow if doesn’t all hang together as a coherent drama. Perhaps one of the problems is that Schubert’s tendency to be prolix and unfocussed - the ‘heavenly length’ of the 9th symphony comes to mind. The choruses are extensive and so make the work seem rather like an oratorio rather than an opera when you listen without the benefit of the staging.  Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the work is the quite extensive use of melodrama (spoken word over music) in the latter part of the opera - I’m sure that Fidelio was an influence here but there are also echoes of The Magic Flute.

I do think that Schubert opera is a lost cause, delightful as some of the music is. But it is worth remembering that he was only 26 when he wrote this, his last opera. As the CD booklet which comes with this recording points out, this was the age at which Mozart wrote the first of his operas which has remained in the repertoire - Dir Entfûhrung. As so often one can only wonder what the music of a mature Schubert would have been like. Alas we will never know.