Berwald: Estrella di Soria

Opera no 95

Berwald: Estrella di Soria

Soloists

I first encountered Berwald on a youth orchestra course when we played his Tragic overture, which is in fact the overture to this opera. I got to know his symphonies - I conducted the Sinfonie Singuliere - and, more relevant for this project, I took part in the British premiere of his opera The Queen of Golconda with the Nottingham University Opera Group.

I like the quirkiness of Berwald’s music. A lot of it is quite straightforward harmonically but he tends to lure you into a false sense of security and then move in a chromatic direction that you were not expecting. It is difficult to place his music in the mainstream tradition - sometimes I am reminded of Berlioz and elsewhere of Mendelssohn, but Berwald has a sound and style all of his own. He has some distinctive fingerprints - little three note rising phrases in the woodwind and a fondness for the interval of a fourth.

Only extracts of the opera are available but there is a good hour of music here. Highlights include a big aria for the soprano (using material familiar from the overture) some lively choruses and some very attractive lighter moments where lyrical music is juxtaposed with rapid patter.  I’d like to hear the whole opera someday though I doubt that it is high on the list of any record company’s repertoire list. 

Grieg: Olav Trygvason

Opera no 94 

Grieg: Olav Trygvason

Soloists

Malmö Symphony Orchestra

Bjarte Engeset

This was fascinating. I had heard of the work but thought that it was incidental music to a play, but in fact it is the torso of an incomplete opera - there are 3 scenes lasting a total of about 30 minutes. Any thoughts that Grieg was just a composer of Bon Bons and trifles was swept away right from the beginning. This was extremely forceful dramatic music that made a real impact. I shouldn’t have been that surprised - last year I listened to the whole of the music from Peer Gynt and was struck by how much more there was to it that the familiar suite - lovely as that is. I didn’t’ detect anything particularly nationalistic in the first two scenes - there were good examples of Grieg being fully absorbed in the central operatic traditions of his time, but the third scene was very different.  Here we immediately entered the world of Grieg’s Norwegian Dances and the folk tradition of Scandinavia. This was delightful music though very different in character to the first two scenes. It would have been interesting to see how it would all have fitted together and Grieg completed the opera. But he and his librettist had very different views on how to proceed. They fell out and the project was not more. That’s a great pity because there is so much of interest in what was written and the history of opera in Scandinavia might have been quite different had the opera been completed and established Grieg on the international opera stage.

Sibelius: The maiden in the tower

Opera no

Sibelius: the Maiden in the Tower

Soloists

Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra

Neeme Järvi

I knew that Sibelius had written an early opera but I assumed that it was a student work. In fact he was almost 30 when he wrote it: he had already written Kullervo and En Saga, and the first symphony was only a couple of years away. So I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was when the work started in an unmistakably Sibelian idiom. I don’t think that anybody else could have written this. 

The rest of the opera was not quite as distinctive but still highly enjoyable  - the choral music in particular was a highlight. It is all over in about 30 mins. It was only performed three times and then forgotten until it was revived in the 1980s. I think that Sibelius realised that his real metier was symphonic music and he never attempted opera again. In his biography of the composer Erik Tawaststjerna says of the libretto ‘ it was the operatic albatross that Sibelius chose to wear round his neck’ but remarks that that’ considering that it is a first attempt it has moments of unmistakable effectiveness’. The opera would be an interesting curiosity to revive occasionally but as I have commented before there is no real place for short operas in today’s operatic practice.

Enescu: Oedipe

Opera no

Enescu: Oedipe

Soloists

Vienna State Opera

Michael Gilen

This was a very different sort of opera to the overtly nationalist pieces I have covered in the last few days of this project. It is a much later piece and less overtly nationalistic. 

Last year I listened to the Enescu octet as part of my 365 project. That was an impressive work and I said that at point I would liste to this opera.https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/2025/04/enescu-octet.html.  I’m glad I did. It is an impressive work which had many admirers. Stylistically it is quite hard to place.  There are some moments which sound almost Bergian, but the language is broadly tonal and at times I was reminded of early 20th century French symbolist opera. Dukas and Chausson come to mind as well as Pelléas. The end, in particular, was very much in that tradition. I suspect that it is a piece that needs several hearings to fully appreciate its subtleties and I will certainly be returning to it. But on this first impression I can fully understand why the piece has a high reputation among opera connoisseurs. 

Erkel: Hunyadi László

 Opera no 91

Erkel: Hunyadi László

Soloists

Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra

Domonkos Héja

I was very impressed by Erkel’s Bank Ban in last year’s project (https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/2025/07/erkel.html) and said that I was looking forward to hearing more of his music. So I was glad today to listen to this second opera of his. It is less well known than the (comparatively) famous Bank Ban- it is mainly remembered today because Lillian Nordica made a very-well regarded aria from the opera in the earliest days of recording - I listened to that again after hearing this recording - it makes quite an impression.

The opera has everything that one wants and expects from a mid 19th century nationalist opera. Plenty of drama, with good tunes and local colour. Early Verdi is perhaps the most prominent influence but there are plenty of coloratura passages which sound more like Donizetti. The more overtly nationalist elements in the score do sound to my inexpert ear authentically Hungarian but more than once I was reminded of Johann Strauss - not the waltzes but some of the fast music. It is a reminder that Austria and Hungary are geographically close and of course were politically aligned during the 19th century. 

Kodâly: Hary Janos

Opera no 90

Kodály: Háry János

Soloists

London Symphony Orchestra

Istvan Kertesz

I’ve know the  Háry János suite since school days - I have played it but unfortunately never with a cimbalon, But this was the first time that I had heard the complete opera. This is the famous recording with Peter Ustinov doing the narration and all of the voices. To be frank I think that the approach now seems rather dated - ‘funny foreign accents don’t really work nowadays, though there is no doubt that Ustinov was a compelling raconteur - he was always a favourite of my parents.

Hearing the opera like this made is seem more like a radio play with incidental music - I didn’t really get a sense of what it might be like as a stage work. There is no doubt that the best music is in the suite - though there was some attractive passages - particularly the chorus music towards the end. So I was quite pleased to have heard the whole thing, but I suspect that it will be the suite which I return to.  

Moniuszko: Halka

Opera no 89

Moniuszko: Halka

Soloists

Teatr Wielki

Robert Satanowski

For my first trip to Eastern Europe for this part of the blog I am going to Poland and Moniuszko. Last year his opera Strasnzy Dwór (the Haunted Manor)was a major discovery and I acquired recordings of all of his operas.

https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/search/label/Moniuszko

Halka is a more serious work than The Haunted Manor and is more typical of the nationalist operas which emerged from Eastern Europe during the middle of the 19th century. It has all the elements that one would expect = big choruses, folk dances, moments of light relief, impassioned arias and impressive ensembles. To my non-specialist ear it didn’t seem obviously Polish in character but certainly you could hear that this came from the same tradition as Russian and Czech opera. Perhaps there were a few moments of operatic cliché but generally the work had an immediacy which was very appealing. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing it - everything I have heard by this composer so far has been well worth listening to. 

Bizet: Le Docteur Miracle

Opera no 88

Bizet: Le Docteur Miracle

Soloists

Orchestre lyrique de région avignon porvence

Samuel Jean

This early work of Bizet has an interesting history. Offenbach sponsored a competition to find the next generation of light opera composers. The finalist all had to write a setting of the same libretto and the prize was awarded jointly to Bizet and Lecoq. Lecoq thought that there had been some understand work with the jury and that he should have won outright. It led to a rift between the two composers which was never entirely healed.

Bizet at this early stage in his life was a prodigious talent. His symphony in C was written at the age of 17 (though astonishingly it was not performed until 1935!). This score shows completely mastery of the operatic form with a grace and elegance which became hallmarks of his mature style. The ‘big number’ is a quartet about an omelette (don’t ask) where Bizet has great fun parodying some of the conventions of grand opera.

Bizet didn’t have much luck as an opera composer - there are several unfinished works and others , including Carmen, have been mangled by other hands. Even today there is no proper authoritative edition of his works - quite astonishing given the central importance of Carmen in the operatic repertoire.

That’s the end of this short series of lighter French works. Next I will be exploring nationalistic operas from Eastern Europe. 

Auber: La Siréne

Opera no 87

Auber: La Sirène

Soloists

Orchestre des Frivolités Parisiennes

David Reiland

If you had to name one composer to sum up opera comique it would probably be Auber, He more or less made the genre his own and over a long period produced dozens of works. While few of these have retained anything other than a toe hold in the repertory the overtures to several of them became mainstays of light music concerts.

I’d not hear this opera before. My initial reaction was one of surprise - indeed I thought for a moment that I had put the wrong CD into the player. For all the world this sounded like quite solemn early German romantic music which might have come from the pen of Mendelssohn. But normal service was soon resumed  and the opera was full of the characterist verve and lyricism that we might expect from an Auber opera. He must have been able to turn out reams of this sort of music almost in his sleep, but every piece of his that I have heard has a freshness and liveliness which leaps of the page. It was mostly great fun, with some outrageous coloratura near the end, but there was also a really beautiful lyrical duet to remind us that Auber was not all about ‘rum-it-tum’. 

Adam: Le Toreador

Opera no 86

Adam: Le Toreador

Soloists

Welsh National Opera

Richard Bonynge

Adam is remembered mainly for his ballet music, in particularly the score to Giselle but he also wrote several operas. The most famous is probably Le Postillion de Longameau, becuase tenors like to tack the very high leading role, but this one has not been completely forgotten. That is mainly because of the variations on ah vous dirai je maman (Twinkle twinkle little star to you and me) which has been recorded by most of the coloratura sopranos from the early days of recording onwards. Those variations have a flute obligato - not uncommon in show pieces for the soprano - but here the added twist is that the love interest is himself a flute player.

I thought that this was a gorgeous little work. It has a charming overture and everything comes across fresh as a new coat of paint. You can certainly see why Adam had such success as a ballet composer - he has a real sense both of melody and of style. I’m pleased to have given myself the chance to hear the opera for the first time.

Boieldieu: Jean de Paris

Opera no 85

Boieldieu: Jean de Paris

Soloists

Ensemble Lyrique de L'ORTF

Jean-Paul Kreder

Boieldieu is sometime called the French Mozart.He was born only a few weeks before Mozart but lived on until 1834. His fame rests on his music for harp and in particular the opera La Dame Blanche, one of the earliest operas based on the works of Walter Scott. I’ve know and loved that opera for a long time and it is a really good example of the early romantic style as it developed out of the lighter operas of the late 18th century.

Jean de Paris from 1812 is not as ambitious as La Dame Blanche but it contains some lovely music, particularly in the first act. The Mozartian influence is very clear but there are also hints of composers like Gretry and Mehul. I found it tailed off a little in the second act but overall I enjoyed the elegance and wit of the pice. Boieldieu was a highly accomplished composer and it would have been interesting to see whether he could have followed up the succees of La Dame Blanche with some further large-scale romantic opera but it was not to be. Ill health dogged his later years and he died of cancer, having lost the ability to speak.

Massé: Les Noces de Jeannette

 Opera no 84

Massé: Les Noces de Jeannette

Soloists

Concerts Pasdeloup

Jean Allain

This is another of those operas which turn up on old vocal records but which now have all but disappeared. Massé like Maillard (opera 83) was a pupil of Halévy and a winner of the Prix de Rome. It is essentially a two-hander for soprano and baritone. It does have two very minor roles and a small part for chorus but these are omitted in this recording - the only one available other than a re-issue of an recording from the early days of recording.

Ir is slightly (though only slightly) more heavyweight than Les Dragons but still very much in the opéra-comique tradition. The soprano part is quite taxing with a couple of coloraturaa arias. It is catchy and tuneful and very typical of its time and place. It is difficult to see how it could ever regain a place in the repertory. It is a bit too long to be a curtain raised and certainly not long enough to be an evening’s entertainment on its own.  But tastes have changed and, alas, there seems no room for such delightful Jeux d’esprit on the modern stage.

Maillart: Les Dragons de Villars

Opera no 83 

Maillart: les Dragons de Villars

Soloists

Richard Balareau

This is the start of an exploration of some of the lighter French repertoire. You couldn’t get a greater contrast between Taverner (opera no 82) and this piece of delightful froth.  Maillard was a fully trained French musician - a pupil of Halévy - who was a winner of the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1841. He wrote several opera, but this is the only one which had any lasting fame. It is all but forgotten now but collectors of historic vocal records will recognise the title as early French singers often recorded extracts from the piece.

It is very much in the lighter opera tradition of Auber which, as we have discussed before in this project, relates back to late 18th century models. It is part of that continuing thread of lighter French operas which spreads through the 19th century and into the early 20th before it was finally subsumed into musical comedy. All of the composers working in this genre were musicians of real quality and the musical values of these works are high. This one is no exception. It is a joy from start to finish. Nothing too taxing but lots of moments of refinement and subtlety. It is a good start to this part of the project.

Maxwell Davies: Taverner

Opera no 82

Peter Maxwell Davies: Taverner

Soloists

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Oliver Knussen

This is a quite extraordinary work. I was aware of it and have some vague memories of the publicity for the first performance: it created quite a stir not only for its subject matter and use of renaissance instruments but also for the extreme modernity of the score. For an English composer to be writing such music in the 1960s (and some of the work was started in the late 1950s) was astonishing. What strikes me more than anything is the confidence with which a still young composer (he was in in his mid 30s when it was produced so much of the music was written in his 20s) mastered his material. The orchestral writing is  completely assured. It must have been an enormous challenge to the orchestra at the time (it sill is hair-raisingly difficult) but it does really pack a punch. Similarly the choral writing has a big impact, especially in the long polyphonic lines in the big ensemble in Act 1.

The solo vocal writing is perhaps harder to appreciate. Some of it seemed to me quite arid in the manner of the least effective bits of late Stravinsky, though elsewhere is was compelling.  Perhaps the most astonishing part of the score is the very end. All of the frenetic activity and hard edges disappears and we are left with a long slow passage for strings which doesn’t compromise in its harmonic language but does seem to hark back in some ways to the traditions of English string writing and beyond that to renaissance polyphony. 

Altogether this was a really good discovery. It was certainly challenging to listen to at times and I am glad I had a score to help me, but I am so pleased that at last I have got round to listening to it.

That’s the end of this part of my exploration of 20th century British opera: I will come back to it later in the year but now I will move on to something much easier on the ear - some of the lighter 19th century French repertoire.

Bennett: The Mines of Sulphur

Opera 81

Richard Rodney Bennett: The Mines of Sulphur

Soloists

Glimmerglast opera

Stewart Robertson

To be honest this didn't leave much of an impression on my either way. I didn't actively dislike it but then again there was very little here that grabbed my attention. It wasn't unattractive in a post-Bergian sort of way but nothing really stood out. It seems to be well paced as music drama and I imagine could be very effective on stage - it had quite a run of early performances after the London premiere but purely as something to listen to I didn't find it engaging. Perhaps only the last few moments - when the cast realised that they are doomed - stood out, but by ten it was too late, both for them and for me!

Tippett: King Priam

Opera 80

Tippett: King Priam

Soloists

London Sinfonietta

David Atherton

I’ve know the music of Michael Tippett since school days - the 2nd string quartet was the first piece of his that I remember hearing. I tried to hear as much of his late music as possible as it came out - I saw The Ice Break at Covent Garden and The Mask of Time at the Proms. I also recall listening to the first broadcasts of String Quartet no 5, The Triple concerto and The Rose Lake. I think that The Midsummer Marriage is one of the great 20th century operas - as for New Year, which I listened to in last year’s project, the jury is still out.

That leaves King Priam. Rather to my surprise I realised that I had never heard the whole work before - the beginning was very familiar as was the war cry at the end of the 2nd act, but much of the rest I had read about and seen the musical examples in the various books about Tippett but hearing it was a new experience.

Priam is the work in which Tippett moved away from the lyricism of The Midsummer Marriage and the concerto for double string orchestra into something much more hard edged. The influence of Stravinsky, especially Agon, is very apparent both in the actual sound of the music but also its mosaic structure. I found it a fascinating work. To me some of it didn’t work. There was too much instrumental ‘doodling’ which didn’t really add anything and the impossible string writing passagework associated with Hecuba seems almost embarrassing. But the material which does work - which is in truth most of it - makes a huge impact. The very start is one of the most arresting openings in all opera and some of the war-like music has real dramatic intensity. But the reflective music also has an eloquence all of its own - I’m thinking here about the song Achilles sings with guitar accompaniment and the wonderful trio for the three main female characters in Act 2.

When I was a student it was almost an article of faith that posterity would see Tippett and not Britten as the major British composer of the second half of the 20th century. That didn’t happen and I can’t see that it ever will. Tippett is such a wildly erratic musical personality but at his best he does belong at the top table. I’ve been rereading the fascinating biography of him by Oliver Soden which is full of insights into a very rich life. Tippett almost dropped completely out of the repertoire after his death but there are signs , mainly though recordings, that there is something of a revival of his music. Let’s hope that that continues.