Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Dvorak: Alfred

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

We normally think of Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904) as a Czech nationalist composer of symphonies. Over the years I have broadcast recordings of one or another of Dvorak's ten operas. These are lyric theaterworks normally sung in the Czech language. Dvorak's first opera Alfred (1870) has a German language libretto and expresses the young composer's fascination with Wagner. He was also struggling to come to terms with the dominant German opera composer of the Romantic era. The result in Alfred was what some might dismiss as "Wagner lite," even though the music is delightfully melodious and dramatically self-assured.

At a later time Dvorak seems to have been embarrassed by his own work, and neglected to promote it. Alfred seems never to have been produced anywhere in the composer's lifetime. After his death only the overture was ever performed in his concert adaptation. The entire opera had to wait until 1938 for a radio broadcast performance in Prague, on which occasion it was sung in Czech translation. The subject matter of Alfred is quite Teutonic. The story is set in ninth-century England, where the Anglo-Saxon king, Alfred the Great, was struggling against invasion and occupation by Danish Vikings.

At long last the world premiere recording of Alfred was made in live concert performance at the Dvorak Hall in Prague. The opera was a component of the 2014 Prague Dvorak Festival. Heiko Mathias Forster directs the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra and Czech Philharmonic Choir of Brno, with seven solo singers. Sung in the original German. A 2014 release on two CD's through the Czech ArcoDiva label. This is the Sunday when "Sunday Afternoon at the Opera" participates in WWUH's Fall Fundraiser week, so while the broadcast is underway, phone in your pledges of financial support for lyric theater programming.