Škroup: Columbus

Opera no 29

Škroup: Columbus (extracts only)

Soloists

Prague Radio Orchestra and Chorus

František Djk

After a group of French and then Italian operas I am off on my (metaphorical) travels again to listen to some Czech operas. My much missed former Ph.D supervisor John Tyrrell wrote the definitive book in English on Czech opera and I will be using it as a guide for this part of the project.

The first composer he deals in detail with is the rather splendidly named František Škroup, who wrote what is generally considered to be the first Czech opera. He also wrote the Czech national anthem.

This opera, based on the life of Christopher Columbus, is a much later work written when the composer had was working at the German opera in Rotterdam. In fact the work was written to a German text. It was not performed in a Czech version until the 1940s. This recording of extracts was a from a radio performance in the 1960s.

It is no forgotten masterpiece. In fact I thought some of it was absolutely awful. It was grotesquely trivial and uninspired. Now I don’t look for profundity in everything . I enjoy much music which is not of the first rate so long as it has character, but this was just bombastic without any real merit.  Some of the quieter music was a bit more appealing but this was very old fashioned music for 1855 and had no character of its own.  I this that this recording was made as a way of honouring a composer who was important in his day, but his time has long gone and I can’t ever imagine this opera being performed other than as curiosity. I’ve certainly no desire to hear it again. My only relief is that this recording was only of extracts  - at least I didn’t have to endure the whole thing,

Verdi: Les Vêpres Siciliennes

Opera no 4

Verdi: Les Vêpres Siciliennes

Soloists

BBC chorus

BBC concert orchestra

Mario Rossi

Ashley Lawrence (ballet music)

This is a fascinating opera. I have listened to most of the Verdi operas over the years and have seen many of them on stage this one has always passed me by. I know the famous aria O tu, Palermo (in Italian) and I have heard the overture before, but other than that this was a blank canvas for me.

It was the work the followed the hugely successful trilogy of middle period operas which really made Verdi's international reputation: Rigoletto, La Traviata and Il Trovatore. Those are all fairly concise works written for the Italian stage. This by contrast is a French Opera on the grandest scale. Most major 19th century composers were drawn at one time or another to  Paris, where they had the huge resources of the Opéra at their disposal. But this also meant that they had to follow the conventions of French Grand Opera, including extensive use of the large chorus, five act and, most importantly a ballet. So this opera has a full length ballet sequence in Act 3 which lasts close to 25 mins.

There are some wonderfully dramatic episodes in this opera. I was particularly struck by the trio just before the final pages, where Verdi really ramps up the tension. But there are also many tender lyrical passages. A couple of isolated aria at the beginning of Act 5 for example and perhaps most notably a tenor-soprano duet in Act 3.  There are also it has to be said some passages of rum-ti-tum which would not be out of place in a light opera. That is just part and parcel of the style - Verdi didn't really get those out of his system completely until Otello and Falstaff which at this stage were decades away.

I followed the piece with the benefit of Julian Burden's indispensable book on Verdi's operas. He does a really good job of putting this music in its context, drawing out the parallels with operas both in the French and Italian repertory. Some of the composers he mentioned were only names to me when I first read his book as a student - since then I have become familiar with some of them and I am sure that they will be included in this project.

Would I rate this opera above my two favourite middle-late period Verdi operas, Simon Boccanegra and Don Carlos? Perhaps not quite. There is a consistency of invention in those scores which is perhaps not quite present here. But on any reckoning this is a fine opera and I am pleased to have got round to it at last (with perhaps an element of shame that it has taken me so long to get there!)