Bittner: Der Musikant

 Opera 179

Bittner: Der Musikant

Soloists

Felix Prohaska

This is a real rarity by a composer I had not heard of until I started hunting around for CD’s of rare operas to use in this project. Bitner (1874-1939) was part of the circle round Mahler. In fact Bittner, who was a lawyer, was involving in settling the affairs of Mahler’s estate after his death. He had some success as a composer in the early years of the 20th century, writing 8 operas , a couple of Symphonies and a couple of String Quartet. This opera was premiered at (what is now) the Vienna State Opera conducted by no less a figure than Bruno Walter.

It is quite a light-hearted work which is clearly indebted to Richard Strauss but also I thought to composers such as Cornelius and Humperdink. But there are certainly some suggestions of Mahler, particularly a long section in 3/4 landler rhythm which would not have been out of place in the middle movement of a Mahler symphony.  Some of the humour is a little heavy-handed but it is generally good natured. A work like this has no chance of being revived nowadays (this CD comes from which I think was a radio recording 1949) and yet if it were put as a recently discovered work of a ‘name’ composer I suspect that it would be received quite well. As so often in the project it shows just how narrow the operatic repertoire actually is - thank heavens for historic CD recordings.