Weber: Silvana

Opera no 52

Weber: Silvana

Soloists

Hagen Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus

Gerhard Markson

As I said at the conclusion of opera 51 I am now turning to German Romantic opera. It is natural to start with Weber as Der Freischutz as that is really the foundation of everything that follows. But Freischutz did not spring from nowhere and this earlier opera (the first of his that has survived in complete form) shows the composer gradually finding his voice. I found it a charming work with a lot of signs of what was to come. All the elements are there: drama, comedy, melodrama, dance and choruses. It doesn’t quite have the maturity of the better known Weber operas but it is clear that even at an early age he was a master of the operatic form.  I included another Weber opera, Abu Hassan, in last year’s project https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/2025/09/weber-abu-hassan.html. This was a promising start for this part of the project.

Catel: Les Bayadères

Opera no 19

Catel: Les Bayadères

Soloists

Solamente Naturali

Didier Talpain

This was a fascinating work. Catel turns up several times in association with Berlioz, who used Catel’s harmony primer in his early musical eduction. Berlioz was known to be an admirer of this opera. It comes as a real turning point in French opera as the various elements which ultimately became French Grand opera as we now know it. So some of this score sounds as if it could have come straight out of Don Giovanni or The Magic Flute but there are also strands of Gluck and Cherubini among others as well as some distant memories of Rameau. But the forward looking elements of the score belong to the same world as La Vestale, which Spontini was working on at more or less the same time. Indeed they share the same librettist - Ettienne de St Jouy - who would go on to write the libretto of William Tell.

So from a historical perspective a really interesting work - it its own right it is hard to see that it could ever become a repertory work but I am glad that I was able to hear it.  The recording comes from in invaluable series of French opera recordings on the Bru Zane label, which have enabled me (along with many others) to hear properly recorded performances of works which would otherwise have been available  - it at all - though dim off-air recordings or on transcripts from scratchy 78s. I am sure that I will return to it several times more in this year’s project.