One of the glories of Bard’s SummerScape festival (a client of my company, 21C Media Group) is the physical and natural setting of the place. The gorgeous Gehry-designed Richard B Fisher Center sits amidst the verdant splendor of New York’s Hudson Valley. Perched at the tree line of a forest, the building’s gleaming edifice reflects the ever-changing light to splendid effect. After Friday’s opening night performance of Franz Schreker’s 1912 opera Der Ferne Klang (The Distant Sound) – the second of the Austrian composer’s eight operas – I walked out to my car, which was parked in a huge meadow, and beneath a starry sky the sounds of nature mingled with the luminous sounds of Schreker that I had taken with me and didn’t want soon to forget.

With a recent staging of a Schreker opera in Los Angeles – which, writer Seth Colter Walls pointed out humorously on Twitter, brought the grand total of Schreker productions in the US to two) – and a handful of productions in recent years in Europe, admirers of his music are starting to use the word “revival” with glee.  Based on my own experience with The Distant Sound – from a concert performance by my then clients Leon Botstein with the American Symphony Orchestra, and, a few seasons later, this new Bard production, encored by Botstein and the ASO – Schreker’s full rehabilitation can’t come soon enough.

Tough personal circumstances (he was born into a poor and itinerant family) and dark political developments (including World War I and the rise of the Nazis) worked against this enormously creative composer, and no doubt led to his early death from a stroke in 1934. Though he had achieved success in his time to rival Richard Strauss, he fell into an obscurity that is only now beginning to pass.

The reviews of the Bard production have thus far been extremely positive, which can only mean good things for the possibility of future productions elsewhere (for a representative sample, try Jeremy Eichler’s for the Boston Globe. Anticipation for the event had been high, with several feature stories (including Matthew Gurewitsch’s for the New York Times helping Bard to get a terrific turnout for opening night.  Director Thaddeus Strassberger, who oversaw a lavishly acclaimed production of Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots at Bard last summer, scored another triumph with his Distant Sound, which he set in the interwar period. His telling use of silent-era film clips was particularly helpful in conjuring up the decadent air of the Weimar era. 

At the heart of this story (the libretto is by Schreker himself) are the divergent and unfathomable paths of love and art. Briefly told, a composer (Fritz, sung with sometime raspy vulnerability by Matthias Schulz) leaves behind his young love (Grete, sung affectingly by Yamina Maamar) to pursue his artistic ambitions. Abandoned in the provinces, her life takes ever-darker turns into, amongst other things, prostitution.  When their paths cross again, Fritz is at first repulsed, but ultimately guilt-ridden, as Grete’s fate holds up a mirror to his own fragile achievement and missed opportunities (mirrors are a big part of Strassberger’s staging as well). 

In the end, though, an opera rises and falls on the effectiveness of its music, and here I find Schreker’s consummate achievement to be without question.  His command of the orchestra is everywhere apparent, and cinematic – that is, moving and flowing – in the best sense of the word. The orchestration may be thick, in the manner of the time, but it’s masterful and makes an original, identifiable sound. By turns sumptuous and lavish, biting and severe, there are also moments of supreme tenderness, the latter partially achieved by the use of celesta, which was suggestive of the “distant sound” that quietly tormented the composer (both the character and Schreker himself). 

The next morning up at the house, Schreker’s Distant Sound was resonating in my ears and I found myself craving more. I found on my shelf only one recording of his music (a Naxos CD –well worth having – containing the Prelude to Memnon and the Romantic Suite).  Just as some have wished that Mahler had written an opera, I found myself wishing, as I listened to this disc, that Schreker had lived longer and tried his hand at writing at least a couple of symphonies.  For now, I can only hope that other opera companies in America will take up his cause.

The remaining performances of Bard SummerScape’s production of Schreker’s The Distant Sound take place on August 4 at 3pm and august 6 at 7pm. Details: Fischer Center