Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Schubert: Alfonso und Estrella

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

At various points in the course of his brief artistic career, Franz Schubert attempted to make a name for himself as an opera composer. Besides the well known incidental music for Rosamunde (1823), Schubert composed at least nine complete operas, three more in substantial fragments and three more in rough sketch. Some were indeed performed, but none with much success. The most grand of these theatrical projects was Fierrabras (1823), a heroic-romantic opera in German language heard on this program in its world-premiere recording for Deutsche Grammophon on Sunday, March 29, 1992.

Also grand in design was the predecessor of Fierrabras, composed in 1821: Alfonso und Estrella. Neither of these two operas saw the stage in Schubert's lifetime. Alfonso und Estrella got at least as far as being considered for staging in Vienna, Berlin and Graz within a year of two of its composition.

Alfonso und Estrella was recorded musically complete for EMI in 1978. EMI released it for the very first time on LPs. It was picked up by the German label Berlin Classics and reissued on compact disc in 1994. The cast in this studio recording could not be bettered. All of the big names in German singing in the 1970s took part: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Edith Mathis, Hermann Prey, Theo Adam, Eberhard Buchner. Otmar Suitner conducted the orchestra of the Staatskapelle Berlin and the chorus of Radio Berlin. As for the music of Alfonso und Estrella, it is as melodically beautiful as any of Schubert's lieder, and as dramatic in its orchestral scoring as any of his symphonies. I first broadcast those Berlin Classics silver discs on Sunday, May 11, 1997. You can hear them a second time today.