Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Schubert: Winterreise; Die Zauberharfe

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

The song cycle Winterreise ("Winter's Journey," 1827) by Franz Schubert is one of the single most sublime tragic works of musical art. Many eminent male vocalists of the twentieth century have recorded it, and you have heard their recorded interpretations of Schubert's dark masterpiece on this program over three decades and more of broadcast.

The greatest interpreter of them all has got to be German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (1925-2012). He recorded the song cycle several times over the course of his long singing career. The recording that lieder connoisseurs rave about is his first one, made in 1955 in monaural sound when he was still indeed a young man himself, presumably like the Winter Traveler of Wilhelm Mueller's poems. (Fischer-Dieskau had already been singing Winterreise publicly since the age of nineteen.)

Fischer-Dieskau combined youthful sweetness of voice with remarkable power of dramatic expression. One of the finest accompanists of the mid century, English pianist Gerald Moore (1899-1987) backed the young baritone. Moore collaborated with Fischer-Dieskau in so many recordings of the lieder repertoire. Their now classic recorded collaboration on Winterreise, originally taped for EMI, reappeared on compact disc in 2016 under the Warner Classics label.

At various points in the course of his brief artistic career Franz Schubert attempted to make a name for himself as an opera composer. It's the best kept secret in the history of music that Franz Schubert wrote opera--a lot of opera. Besides the well known incidental music for Rosamunde (1822), Schubert composed at least nine complete operas, three more in substantial fragments and three more in rough sketch.

The sprightly overture to Rosamunde actually comes from Schubert's Singspiel staged in 1820, Die Zauberharfe or "The Magic Harp." It ran for seven nights to mixed reviews and was never revived in the composer's lifetime. Only when you hear the overture in its proper context can you understand how the melodic themes it introduces relate to the rest of the music Schubert wrote. Some of the score consists of big choral numbers, and there are several lengthy passages of melodrama, ie. spoken word dialogue over orchestral accompaniment.

Die Zauberharfe was produced musically complete at the 1983 music festival of the Teatro Communale of Bologna. The Italian label Bongiovanni picked up the live recording of "The Magic Harp" for issue in a two-CD package. Tito Gotti directed the Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus of the National Theater of Szeged in Hungary. The two leading roles in the fantastical proceedings of this German Romantic fairy opera are taken by singers, who are augmented by five actors in speaking parts.

I last broadcast what is presumably the world premiere recording of Die Zauberharfe on Sunday, May 6, 2001. There are other rare recordings of Schubert's operas, also released through Bongiovanni or other labels, thatI have presented over the years, among them the two longest of these works, Fierrabras (1826) and Alfonso und Estrella (1824)