Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Schumann: Genoveva

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

From opera of the German baroque we spring forward in time to the romantic era in mid nineteenth century Germany.

Genoveva (1850) was Robert Schumann's one and only opera. It was staged in Leipzig with moderate success. Despite the decline of his physical health and mental powers, Schumann managed to put a lot of his finest music into Genoveva. The overture has been frequently performed and recorded on its own. On the face of it, Genoveva is a medieval romance, but Schumann insisted his opera was "...not the sentimental tale of old." As a lyric drama it is psychologically quite modern, more along the lines of Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande, a work of the early twentieth century.

Genoveva was recorded in its entirety for the first time in 1976 in the city where it originally premiered. Kurt Masur conducted the orchestra of the Leipzig Gewandhaus and chorus of Radio Berlin. Soprano Edda Moser sang the title role. Genoveva is the wife of Count Siegfried of the Palitinate.The Count was the late legendary baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Other contemporaneous vocal greats were in the cast. Tenor Peter Schreier was one of them. Just this year the Dutch label Brilliant Classics reissued Genoveva on two compact discs, licensed to do so by the German record company Edel.