Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Weber: Silvana

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

This is a strange operatic work in that the title character never sings a single note. In fact, she doesn't even utter so much as a spoken word until the very end. Originally called Waldmädchen or "Forest Maiden," Silvana is an innocent nature-girl who, although mute, acts out her emotions on stage. Written when Carl Maria von Weber was but thirteen years old, the opera premiered unsuccessfully in 1800. It was largely reworked and mounted again a decade later.

In its final 1810 form Silvana has all the attributes of German opera of the early Romantic period as we have come to it through Der Freischütz. Passages from the music to Silvana will sound strangely familiar to listeners who know the famous Weber opera that followed it in 1821. Those who know and love Mozart's The Magic Flute will recognize a lot of Papageno in one of the male characters in Silvana: the buffoonish Krips, squire to Count von Helfenstein.

There exists only one other recording of Silvana, made live in performance in 1996 at the Hagen Opera in Germany and issued by the Danish record label Marco Polo.The new German CPO label recording is derived from a live radio broadcast of a concert performance given in Munich in 2010. This performance benefits by a new critical edition of Weber's score. Ulf Schirmer conducts the Munich Radio Orchestra and Chorus of Bavarian Radio.