Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Schubert: Fierrabras

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

At various points in 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.

The grandest of all his theatrical projects was Fierrabras (1823), a German language heroic-romantic opera modeled after those by Weber. The libretto reworks a chivalrous tale from the time of the emperor Charlemagne and the noble knight Roland. Schubert's music for Fierrabras comes from the same creative period as the song cycle Die schone Müllerin and the "Unfinished Symphony." He finished his score, the longest he ever wrote, in timely fashion for imminent production at the Kärntnertor Theater, but due to opera politics the production was scuttled. Schubert never received the payment due for his work from the theater. The opera had to wait until 1897, the centenary year of Schubert's birth, for its staged premiere.

In more modern times, Fierrabras has been excerpted in recording, broadcast on radio, and since 1980 has been revived occasionally in theatrical performance. It got the definitive production it so richly deserved in 1988 in Schubert's hometown, Vienna, at the prestigious Theater an der Wien, with Claudio Abbado conducting the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the Arnold Schoenberg Choir. The English baritone Thomas Hampson is heard as Roland. I last aired this Deutsche Grammophon CD release exactly seventeen years ago this Sunday and prior to that on Sunday, March 29, 1992. I figure you Schubert lovers will enjoy hearing Fierrabras again after you heard Schubert's other large-scale medieval romance, Alfonso und Estrella (1822), broadcast last year on Sunday, October 16.