GOLDMARK Königin von Saba
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Fabrice Bollon, Károly Goldmark
Genre:
Opera
Label: CPO
Magazine Review Date: AW16
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 188
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: CPO555 013-2
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
(Die) Königin von Saba |
Károly Goldmark, Composer
Andrei Yvan, Guardian of the Temple, Bass Fabrice Bollon, Composer Freiburg Hochschule für Musik Vokalensemble Freiburg Philharmonic Orchestra Freiburg Theatre Opera Choir Irma Mihelič, Sulamith, Soprano Jin Seok Lee, High Priest, Bass Károly Goldmark, Composer Károly Szemerédy, King Solomon, Baritone Katerina Hebelková, Queen of Sheba, Tenor Kevin Moreno, Baal-Hanan, Baritone Kim-Lillian Strebel, Astaroth, Soprano Nuttaporn Thammathi, Assad, Mezzo soprano |
Author: Tim Ashley
Goldmark is usually dismissed as eclectic, though his work can also be viewed as adopting a cosmopolitan stance at a time of growing nationalism. Just as he saw no inherent dichotomy between Brahms (a friend) and Wagner (he liked the music but not the man or his opinions), so he perceived no disjunction between elements of Wagnerian methodology and post-Meyerbeerian grand opera. With its four-act/five-scene structure, ballets, grand ceremonials and complex theatrical demands (Assad dies in a sandstorm), Die Königin von Saba is in many ways a fine example of the latter. Goldmark deploys closed forms – the set-piece arias can be analysed in terms of recitative, cavatina and cabaletta – and avoids anything approximating the symphonic development of thematic material. The Wagnerisms lie elsewhere.
The narrative is frequently cited as derived from Tannhäuser, though there are shifts in emphasis. Assad is a warrior and diplomat, rather than an artist. There’s none of Wagner’s pseudo-Christian emphasis on chastity: the texts of Sulamith’s arias derive from the Song of Songs and her feelings for Assad are explicitly sexual. Wagner’s influence on vocal writing and harmony is, however, significant. The big choruses unfurl with majestic slowness like the ceremonies from Lohengrin, while the Queen, when crossed, resorts to Ortrud-like phrases over an immense span. Tristan-esque chromatics turn Orientalist in their depiction of the Queen and her retinue, while Assad’s hallucinations in the Syrian desert steer close to Tristan’s ravings in Wagner’s Act 3. The shockingly brief love duet, however, is the antithesis of Tristan – a furtive quickie rather than a night of rapture – though there’s a terrifically sexy passage towards the end, when the Queen, sensing Assad is deserting her, uses all her wiles to get him back.
The new recording hails from Freiburg and the same team that gave us CPO’s much-admired Francesca da Rimini earlier this year (1/16). The two sets share the same conductor in Fabrice Bollon, and hence a number of similarities in approach: subtlety in music that can turn bombastic if insensitively handled; orchestral refinement and a refusal to indulge in melodrama or crude effects; and singing of great authority from a uniformly fine, if unfamiliar cast, who more than adequately meet the score’s challenges.
We could do with more words from Katerina Hebelková’s Queen, but her voice, with its quick vibrato and dark, almost Rita Gorr-ish tone, is deeply sensual, and we fully understand why her Assad, Thai tenor Nuttaporn Tammathi, is so fatally attracted. He’s a real find, singing with eloquence, passion and a voice of remarkable beauty and evenness: his ‘Magische Töne’, the best-known number in the score, ends with a breathtaking ascent to its final high pianissimos. Irma Mihelič’s silvery-toned Sulamith is touchingly vulnerable, though this is a voice that can also soar with thrilling ease over massive choral forces. Hungaroton’s 1980 recording with Siegfried Jerusalem as Assad and Klára Takács as the Queen seems staid and unnecessarily grandiose in comparison. It’s a heady, enthralling experience, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.
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