Echo et Narcisse, Gluck's last opera, was a failure on its premiere in Paris in 1779, and has never been allowed to live it down. It failed again in a revised version the next year, and has had a consistently poor press and scarcely any modern revivals, let alone recordings. This pair of CDs is in fact a product of a recent revival at the Schwetzingen Festival; the little theatre there, at what was originally the summer residence of the famous Mannhelm court, has restored eighteenth-century theatrical machinery, though to judge from what I take to be a production picture on the sleeve any attempts at authenticity must have been confined to the music.
Of course, the man who gave his noble and masterly Iphigenie en Tauride in spring 1779 is unlikely to have produced a complete dud four months later. And Echo et Narcisse is certainly not that. It has very little dramatic action or interplay of characters; the plot, after Ovid, is concerned with the self-love of Narcissus, its fatal effect on his beloved Echo (who herself has other limitations) and Love's ultimate triumph in bringing her back to life and uniting the lovers when he, in horror, is about to kill himself.
The points of resemblance to Orfeo ed Euridice need no emphasis: here again Gluck focuses on the power of love, and provides music of great emotional intensity at crucial moments. But the topic with its allegorical overtones is less strongly appealing, and in the First Act particularly there is some loss of expressive concentration, which the music duly reflects. But the content of the Second and Third Acts amply compensates: the music portending Echo's death (very like the opening scene of Orfeo) is in Gluck's finest nobly mournful vein, and the ensuing scene where Echo fades, to the hieratic music of the tortured Narcissus against a choir and an orchestra (including solemn trombones) is quite remarkable while the last act opens with a beautiful elegiac scene, continues with a finely tender air for Narcissus's friend Cynire, and then his own superb air ''Beaux lieux temoins de mon ardeur'', the work's emotionai climax (after which he hears Echo's voice and prepares to kill himself). Gluck at his greatest, this, and his richest, for the music is more fully and colourfully scored than any other of his mature operas (except perhaps certain sections of Paride ed Elena).
The lover of Gluck's music, then, should not miss this set, even though he may wonder, halfway through, whether the received opinions may not be correct. The performance here is stylishly moulded, and done with due force and expressive vitality, by Rene Jacobs, using a good periodinstrument orchestra, recorded well forward. Less happy, perhaps, is the enormous amount of noise from movement and action on the stage I really cannot imagine what they are doing to produce so many loud thumps in an evening. Still, clearly that is the price one has to pay to have the opera on disc at all. The cast is generally accomplished, though some of the singers have not managed to discard the vibratos they use in later repertory. I enjoyed the two nymphs, sung by Christina Hogman (particularly stylish) and Gertrud Hoffstedt (very sure and vital), as well as Sophie Boulin's Echo, steady and by no means wanting in passion in her big Second Act scene. The two tenors singing Narcissus and the comparably important role of Cynire are rather too alike to be ideal for recording, but both show polished lyrical voices, Kurt Streit's being slightly the slenderer and more generous of poetic nuance, though Peter Galliard's shapely singing gives much pleasure too.'