Schmidt Notre Dame
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Franz Schmidt
Genre:
Opera
Label: Capriccio
Magazine Review Date: 5/1989
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 126
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 10 248/9
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| Notre Dame |
Franz Schmidt, Composer
Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin RIAS Chamber Choir Christof Perick, Conductor Franz Schmidt, Composer Gwyneth Jones, Esmeralda, Soprano Hans Helm, An Officer, Baritone Hartmut Welker, Archdeacon, Baritone Horst Laubenthal, Gringoire, Tenor James King, Phoebus, Soprano Kaja Borris, Old Falourdel, Mezzo soprano Kurt Moll, Quasimodo, Bass St Hedwig's Cathedral Choir, Berlin |
Author: Michael Oliver
'Son of Bruckner' is Franz Schmidt's reputation, and if you can hardly imagine Bruckner writing an opera, any apprehension you may feel at the thought of Bruckner Sohn writing one might be increased by reading Gerhard Schmiedpeter's note accompanying this first ever recording of Notre Dame. He describes how Schmidt wrote the orchestral music of the opera before the vocal lines (large parts of it were in fact quarried from an abandoned Fantasy for piano and orchestra), and how one section of the score was performed as an independent concert piece before work on the opera began. He could have gone on even further: Albert Arbeiter has shown (in Studien zu Franz Schmidt I, Vienna: 1976) that Schmidt sketched the opera without much reference to the libretto, merely labelling this page or that ''chorus'' or ''dialogue'' but not necessarily following even these indications when the voice parts and text were finally added. This curious method of working shows at times, not so much in awkward word-setting but in passages where the voices seem to have been skilfully inlaid into the orchestra: symphonic movements with vocal obbligatos. You might call Notre Dame, indeed, an 'orchestral opera': Schmidt doesn't go in for arias or duets, much (moments of purely vocal lyrical effusion are usually brief), his writing for chorus is rather orator-like and formal (the Parisian mob express their feelings in fugues and Bachian turbae), and the presence in a shortish two-act opera of three orchestral entr'actes (as well as two preludes) signifies rather more than praiseworthy consideration for scene-shifters.
A 'symphonists's opera', then, an interesting but inevitably flawed demonstration of what happens when a cobbler abandons his last? Not at all symphonic, undoubtedly, but therein lies its strength. Schmidt the symphonist knew all about writing themes that can take on new guises in development. Each of his principal characters has one: a florid gipsy melody from his own Eastern European homeland for Esmeralda (strange then, that when she sings one of her native airs to entertain the crowd she should do so in Spanish); a proud, leaping motive for her would-be seducer the soldier Phoebus; a solemn (indeed Brucknerian) chorale for the Archdeacon (Hugo's Frollo though un-named in the opera), and so on. The skill with which Schmidt varies and transforms these themes, to depict the subjection and destruction of Esmeralda's joyous freedom, to show both the debonair Phoebus's love and his arrogance, to reveal the guilt beneath Frollo's reverend dignity is remarkable, and it is one source of the opera's power. But Schmidt's feeling for the stage is strong, as well: the impressive darkness that opens Act 2 is somehow deepened by the recollections (from an ensemble of solo strings) of the fated love music from the previous act, the atmosphere of Esmeralda's trial is simply but most effectively evoked by the justaposition of solemn plainchant and broken lyrical phrases, Quasimodo's description of his world of air and light among the towers of Notre Dame is beautifully illustrated by lovely hovering music in the orchestra. (Quasimodo's own theme, by the way, is not transformed. He remains at the end as he began: deformed and when threatened, terrible, but innocent, the only character in the opera whose love for Esmeralda is quite selfless and thus non-destructive.)
It would work very well on stage, I feel sure, so it is a slight disappointment that some of Schmidt's carefully devised spatial effects (offstage music, mainly, and the slow procession from a distance in the trial scene) have scarcely been hinted at in this recording, and the singers have been placed in the perspective of a concert (chorus back, soloists well forward), not a stage. The part of Esmeralda was written with Maria Jeritza in mind, and then altered for Marie Gutheil-Schoder, who sang at the premiere. Jones has the sort of glamour and sheer heft that those names evoke and the role requires. The world is by now divided into those who regard Dame Gwyneth's occasional wobble as an insuperable obstacle to enjoying anything she does and those to whom it is a minor irritation set beside the gleam and the effortless eagerness of her singing. I am of the latter persuasion, so there. King has the right vocal metal (now somewhat tarnished) for Phoebus, if only he would sing quietly (which he rarely does) or with genuinely ardent emotion. Welker is a sonorous and impressive Archdeacon, Laubenthal a decent Gringoire and Moll makes maximum impact in the crucial (but in this opera infrequent) scenes involving Quasimodo. The chorus are moderate, the orchestra excellent (though very slightly understaffed in the strings by the sound of it); Perick lovingly moulds the many and subtle orchestral beauties with which this opera abounds. Despite the rather unatmospheric recording (the sound is good otherwise) the impression of a work that theatres outside Vienna have been neglecting for far too long is very strong indeed.'
A 'symphonists's opera', then, an interesting but inevitably flawed demonstration of what happens when a cobbler abandons his last? Not at all symphonic, undoubtedly, but therein lies its strength. Schmidt the symphonist knew all about writing themes that can take on new guises in development. Each of his principal characters has one: a florid gipsy melody from his own Eastern European homeland for Esmeralda (strange then, that when she sings one of her native airs to entertain the crowd she should do so in Spanish); a proud, leaping motive for her would-be seducer the soldier Phoebus; a solemn (indeed Brucknerian) chorale for the Archdeacon (Hugo's Frollo though un-named in the opera), and so on. The skill with which Schmidt varies and transforms these themes, to depict the subjection and destruction of Esmeralda's joyous freedom, to show both the debonair Phoebus's love and his arrogance, to reveal the guilt beneath Frollo's reverend dignity is remarkable, and it is one source of the opera's power. But Schmidt's feeling for the stage is strong, as well: the impressive darkness that opens Act 2 is somehow deepened by the recollections (from an ensemble of solo strings) of the fated love music from the previous act, the atmosphere of Esmeralda's trial is simply but most effectively evoked by the justaposition of solemn plainchant and broken lyrical phrases, Quasimodo's description of his world of air and light among the towers of Notre Dame is beautifully illustrated by lovely hovering music in the orchestra. (Quasimodo's own theme, by the way, is not transformed. He remains at the end as he began: deformed and when threatened, terrible, but innocent, the only character in the opera whose love for Esmeralda is quite selfless and thus non-destructive.)
It would work very well on stage, I feel sure, so it is a slight disappointment that some of Schmidt's carefully devised spatial effects (offstage music, mainly, and the slow procession from a distance in the trial scene) have scarcely been hinted at in this recording, and the singers have been placed in the perspective of a concert (chorus back, soloists well forward), not a stage. The part of Esmeralda was written with Maria Jeritza in mind, and then altered for Marie Gutheil-Schoder, who sang at the premiere. Jones has the sort of glamour and sheer heft that those names evoke and the role requires. The world is by now divided into those who regard Dame Gwyneth's occasional wobble as an insuperable obstacle to enjoying anything she does and those to whom it is a minor irritation set beside the gleam and the effortless eagerness of her singing. I am of the latter persuasion, so there. King has the right vocal metal (now somewhat tarnished) for Phoebus, if only he would sing quietly (which he rarely does) or with genuinely ardent emotion. Welker is a sonorous and impressive Archdeacon, Laubenthal a decent Gringoire and Moll makes maximum impact in the crucial (but in this opera infrequent) scenes involving Quasimodo. The chorus are moderate, the orchestra excellent (though very slightly understaffed in the strings by the sound of it); Perick lovingly moulds the many and subtle orchestral beauties with which this opera abounds. Despite the rather unatmospheric recording (the sound is good otherwise) the impression of a work that theatres outside Vienna have been neglecting for far too long is very strong indeed.'
Schmidt Notre Dame
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