Goetz: Der Widerspenstigen Zähmung

Opera no 65

Goetz: Der Widerspenstigen Zähmung

Soloists

Bavarian Radio Orchestra

Jospeha Keilberth

I came across Hermann Goetz while I was still at school when our youth orchestra played his symphony on a residential course. I imagine that the conductor (Trevor Harvey who wrote for Gramophone magazine ) wanted to hear what it sounded like. But the name Goetz is also familiar to readers of the music criticism of George Bernard Shaw, who wrote a very enthusiastic review of this opera 'You have to go to Mozart’s finest quartets and quintets on the one hand, and to Die Meistersinger on the other, for work of the quality we find, not here and there, but continuously, in the Symphony and in the opera, two masterpieces which place him securely above all other German composers of the last hundred years, save only Mozart and Beethoven, Weber and Wagner.  He also said' He has the charm of Schubert without his brainlessness, the refinement and inspiration of Mendelssohn without his limitation and timid gentility, Schumann’s sense of harmonic expression without his laboriousness, shortcoming, and dependence on external poetic stimulus; while as to unembarrassed mastery of the material of music, shewing itself in the Mozartian grace and responsiveness of his polyphony, he leaves all three of them simply nowhere.  Brahms, who alone has touches him in mere brute musical faculty, is a dolt in comparison to him.”, 

As somebody who has never appreciated Brahms that latter comment did rather appeal!

The opera is a version of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. I did hear it years ago and coming back to it I found it a pure delight. It has real charm. Some attractive lyrical passages and moments of broad comedy. Goetz keeps the momentum going and has a real sense of theatre. The basic musical language is Mendelssohnian but there are are touches of later romantic harmony with a few nods to Wagner here are there. It does in my view rank very highly in the pantheon of comic operas - perhaps only The Barber of Baghdad is its equal. Shaw was spot on!