OPERA
Wunderkind In Dead City of Dreams
Botstein’s Bard Summerscape gives life to Korngold’s work
BY ELI JACOBSON
Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957)
revolutionized the sound of the Hollywood
fi lm score, despite being raised by
a dominating conservative music critic
father, Julius, to be the next Mozart, Wagner, or
Strauss in turn-of-the-century Vienna. A child
prodigy, Korngold produced his fi rst theatrical
work at age 13 and by age 23 scored an international
triumph with his opera “Die tote Stadt”
(1920). The rise of the Nazis and the Austrian
Anschluss in 1938 drove the Jewish composer
permanently to Hollywood where he been writing
scores for Hollywood fi lms, including “The
Adventures of Robin Hood” and “Kings Row.”
Korngold’s classical Viennese style and orchestral
techniques epitomized the classic Hollywood
style of fi lm scoring — later appropriated
by John Williams and others. After the war, the
aging boy wonder was viewed as a sell-out and
his tonal post-Romantic style was considered
passé — “more corn than gold” the critics said
of his 1945 violin concerto. Korngold died in
Los Angeles at age 60 believing himself a forgotten
man. The 1970s saw a reappraisal and revival
of Korngold’s works, including orchestral
albums of his fi lm scores co-produced by his
younger son George and a successful 1975 revival
of “Die tote Stadt” at New York City Opera
in an admired production by Frank Corsaro.
Dr. Leon Botstein devoted the 2019 Bard
Summerscape Festival to “Korngold and his
World,” exploring all aspects of Korngold’s
eclectic career. The centerpiece was the American
premiere of Korngold’s most ambitious opera
“Die Wunder der Heliane” (1927) in a fully
staged production. His most familiar and popular
opera “Die Tote Stadt” (1920) was performed
in a semi-staged concert.
Korngold hoped “Der Wunder von Heliane”
(“The Miracle of Heliane”) would be his masterpiece
but it was a mixed success at its premiere
and disappeared when the Nazis banned
his music a few years later. The Telegraph
marked its British premiere by proclaiming it
“unmitigated codswallop.” The libretto, set in
an unnamed country at an unspecifi ed time,
is an overheated symbolist-expressionist parable
based on a novella by poet and dramatist
Hans Kaltneker. It concerns the forbidden love
of Heliane, the beautiful and virginal wife of
the despotic Leader, for the messianic Stranger,
who is imprisoned for swaying the populace as
a prophet of love. Heliane visits him in prison
and despite her never having given herself
to her husband, she promptly accedes to the
Stranger’s requests to nuzzle her golden hair,
caress her bare feet, and gaze upon her naked
STEPHANIE BERGER
Ausrine Stundyte and Daniel Brenna in the Bard Summerscape
Festival production of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s“Die Wunder der
Heliane.”
body. The chaste yet transgressive lovers are
put on trial before the judges and the Leader.
Heliane’s defense occasions the one piece from
the opera that has survived outside the work
itself: “Ich ging zu ihm,” a soaring soprano aria
recorded by Renée Fleming. The “miracle” of the
title sees the resurrection of the Stranger, with
the lovers ascending to some elevated spiritual
plane to an explosion of harp and strings that
wouldn’t sound out of place in a Warner Brothers
extravaganza.
Korngold’s music is loud, it is busy, it fl irts
with unconventional harmony without crossing
over into dodecaphonic territory. Yet outside
of Heliane’s aria, not much of it is musically
memorable. None of the emotions depicted in
the story are grounded in psychological or human
reality, so Korngold falls back on musical
posturing and note-spinning without much
musical substance. Botstein and the American
Symphony Orchestra proved vital advocates
for Korngold’s music in the pit — the textures
were vibrant and the rhythms were incisive.
The oft-maligned Botstein in his proper métier
is a quite fi ne conductor — he lacks the light
touch for Chabrier and operetta. But in densely
orchestrated early 20th century German or
Eastern and Middle European serious operas,
Botstein is an admirable technician and interpreter.
I got a better sense of the socre’s scope
and quality from Botstein’s interpretation than
from the Decca CD recording led lifelessly by
John Mauceri.
Christian Räth’s sensible often utilitarian
production, though updated to some grim 20th
century totalitarian state, was basically conservative,
which isn’t a bad idea for a totally unfamiliar
work. A wilder more surreal approach
would have added dramatic fl air but probably
further confuse an already abstruse and pretentious
narrative. Esther Bialas’ set and costume
designs mixed imagery from Weimar-era
silent fi lms like “Metropolis” with grungy industrial
realism. The palette stressed dark grays
and blacks with isolated splashes of color.
The cast was mostly young, nervy, and game,
struggling with diffi cult post-Wagnerian vocal
writing and bombastic orchestration — Botstein
sometimes covered the singers in his enthusiasm
for Korngold’s ambitious orchestral
writing. Lithuanian soprano Ausrine Stundyte,
in a rare US appearance, made for a dramatically
intelligent, vocally resilient Heliane. Her
sturdy tone can turn wiry under pressure and
the climaxes of “Ich ging zu ihm” didn’t ascend
effortlessly in the soprano stratosphere, but she
showed great stage savvy and poise in a role
that is more a concept of the feminine ideal
than a real human being. Alfred Walker’s rich
mahogany baritone revealed both warmth and
power as the brutal Leader. He actually gained
sympathy for the character through the beauty
of his tone and fi ne German diction (which I am
not sure the composer intended for the role).
In contrast, heldentenor Daniel Brenna as the
Christ-like Stranger, dressed in an orange prison
jumpsuit, was clumsy and ungainly both
in voice and stage persona. Further working
against the libretto’s description of the Stranger’s
physical beauty and spirituality, Brenna
was wrongly directed to paw Heliane with crude
physical lust that cheapened the Stranger’s attachment
to her. Brenna has not fi gured out
the passaggio transition into the upper register,
constantly squeezing out strangulated high
notes through his glottis. There was a powerful
supporting turn by mezzo Jennifer Feinstein
as the sinister Messenger and a vivid cameo by
the inventive character tenor David Cangelosi
as the blind judge.
Korngold’s career sharply declined after “Heliane,”
but that was as much 20th century history
working against him as bad luck or loss
of talent. His overbearing father’s attacks on
musical modernists in the press also did harm.
Still, Korngold came into touch with Mahler,
Puccini, and Strauss, the glamorous fi elds of
opera and operetta, and later the Hollywood of
Errol Flynn. His music lived on through all that
and survives today thanks to advocates like
Botstein.
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