Loewe: Die Drei Wünsche

Opera no 58

Loewe: Die Drei Wünsche

Soloists

Rundfunkorchester des SWF

Peter Falk

I enjoyed the Loewe ballads in last year’s project https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/2025/12/blog-post.html . I know that he was a prolific song composer but I hadn’t realised that he had also written operas. In fact he wrote 5 but this was the only one which was ever performed. In reality is more like a Singspiel than an opera - essentially it is a series of individual numbers connected by dialogue. I wasn’t expecting anything too serious but in fact this is a very light-weight piece which for its time must have seen rather old-fashioned. There is little here that couldn’t have been written a generation earlier. That’s not a criticism of course- on its own terms the piece works well. One senses that Loewe was happiest with the song form rather than anything more symphonic and there is nothing here which looks forward to the development of German opera into the middle years of the 19th century. An enjoyable listen but I didn’t think that it had the characterfulness of the Lortzing opera which preceded it in this series.

Kreutzer: Das Nachlager in Granada

Opera 55

Kreutzer: Das Nachlager in Granada

Soloists

Kölner Rundfunkorchestra

Helmut Froschauer

Konradin Kreutzer (not the person to whom Beethoven dedicated a violin sonata) was part of the circle of musicians in Vienna at the turn of 19th century and certainly knew Beethoven and, perhaps, Haydn.  He was a prolific composer whose work included many operas. This one, his last, is the only one to have maintained even the slightest toe-hold in the German repertory. 

It shows just how influential the works of Weber, particularly Der Freischütz had become in Germany. It seems almost that Kreutzer had used that score as a recipe book when putting together his opera. All the elements that define German Romantic opera are there - hunting horns, peasant choruses, pastoral scenes, lyrical arias and dramatic ensembles. I found the score enjoyable but not particularly memorable - except perhaps for the rather striking use of bell-like effects near the end of the first act. I suspect that there are dozens of operas of this type lying forgotten on dusty shelves in the back of German opera houses - the chance of revival now are extremely thin.