Smyth - Der Wald
£13.25
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Label: Resonus Classics
Cat No: RES10324
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 1
Genre: Opera
Release Date: 8th September 2023
Contents
Artists
Natalya Romaniw (soprano)Claire Barnett-Jones (mezzo-soprano)
Robert Murray (tenor)
Andrew Shore (baritone)
Morgan Pearse (baritone)
Matthew Brook (bass)
BBC Singers
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Conductor
John AndrewsWorks
Der WaldArtists
Natalya Romaniw (soprano)Claire Barnett-Jones (mezzo-soprano)
Robert Murray (tenor)
Andrew Shore (baritone)
Morgan Pearse (baritone)
Matthew Brook (bass)
BBC Singers
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Conductor
John AndrewsAbout
For over 100 years the only opera by a woman to have been performed at the Metropolitan Opera, Der Wald is a taut, brooding drama where the simplicity of village life comes under threat from the uncontrollable desires unleashed by the darkness of the forest.
Richly orchestrated, harmonically daring, and demanding a huge expressive range from the cast, the narrative drives relentlessly forward from wedding to tragedy in a single act, observed pitilessly by the eternal spirits of the forest.
John Andrews conducts the BBC Singers, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and an international cast in the first ever recording of this work, using Smyth’s English version of the libretto.
Cast:
- Röschen: Natalya Romaniw (soprano)
- Iolanthe: Claire Barnett-Jones (mezzo-soprano)
- Heinrich: Robert Murray (tenor)
- The Pedlar: Andrew Shore (baritone)
- Rudolf; Morgan Pearse (baritone)
- Peter: Matthew Brook (bass)
Richly orchestrated, harmonically daring, and demanding a huge expressive range from the cast, the narrative drives relentlessly forward from wedding to tragedy in a single act, observed pitilessly by the eternal spirits of the forest.
John Andrews conducts the BBC Singers, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and an international cast in the first ever recording of this work, using Smyth’s English version of the libretto.
Cast:
- Röschen: Natalya Romaniw (soprano)
- Iolanthe: Claire Barnett-Jones (mezzo-soprano)
- Heinrich: Robert Murray (tenor)
- The Pedlar: Andrew Shore (baritone)
- Rudolf; Morgan Pearse (baritone)
- Peter: Matthew Brook (bass)
Sound/Video
Paused
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1Prologue: Deep hid in the heart of the forest glades
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2Transformation – Scene I: Kind friends are come to say goodbye
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3Scene II: Ope’ wide your eyes and stare!
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4Scene III: I dare not leave you alone
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5Scene IV: Weird is the sound of that horn!
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6Scene V: My friend, what alarms you?
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7Scene VI: Be gone!
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8Scene VII: Tie his hands! – Kind sirs, let me go!
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9Scene VIII: Is for you pains ’tis well. I know the man!
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10Scene IX: Now, now is the hour!
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11Epilogue: How swiftly passeth man’s delight
Europadisc Review
Buoyed by the attention surrounding Leah Broad’s recent Quartet – a biographical account of four 20th-century British women composers – and last year’s Glyndebourne production of The Wreckers, Ethel Smyth’s stock has rarely been higher in the eight decades since her death in 1944. If you’re at all familiar with her work, it’s likely to be with The Wreckers, or at least its overture, which even during the ups and downs of her own lifetime, overshadowed most of the rest of her output. Yet before The Wreckers she had composed two other operas, both likewise premiered in Germany, where she had studied at the Leipzig Conservatoire. And it is the second of these – Der Wald, premiered at Berlin’s Königliche Oper (today’s Berlin Staatsoper) on 2 April 1902 under the baton of Karl Muck – that became her breakthrough work.
A tale of human passions and evil powers set against the background of ‘eternal Nature’ in a German forest of the middle ages, this succinct one-acter had a decidedly mixed reception at its premiere thanks to anti-British sentiment fuelled by the Boer War. But the work’s first British production at Covent Garden in July 1902 was, in Smyth’s own words, ‘one of my few almost wholly delightful operatic experiences’ thanks to a stellar cast and the experienced guidance of stage director Francis Neilson. The work was soon being hailed as the herald of a new age of English opera at a time when few native works were to be heard on the British stage, and the following year Der Wald – in a double-bill with Verdi’s Il trovatore! – became the only opera by a woman composer to be performed at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, a distinction it held until as recently as 2016.
If the time is ripe for a revival and reassessment of Der Wald, it could hardly be in better hands than those of conductor John Andrews, a seasoned champion of neglected works of the past. He has assembled a sterling cast led by soprano Natalya Romaniw as the heroine Röschen, tenor Robert Murray as her beloved Heinrich the woodcutter, and mezzo-soprano Claire Barnett-Jones as the witch-temptress Iolanthe. With welcome support from the BBC Singers (spirits of the forest in the framing Prologue and Epilogue, as well as earthy villagers and huntsmen) and BBC Symphony Orchestra, Andrews has assembled a team that does the work handsome justice. It is sung in English rather than the original German, and the recording in Studio 1 of BBC’s Maida Vale Studios, is detailed but warm, with the voices nicely forward.
The work itself is true to Smyth’s own essentially conservative late-Romantic musical tastes, with a Brahmsian richness to the opening bars of the Prologue, and a harmonic language which, while colourful and expressive, rarely treads the more ‘avant garde’ path of Mahler or Strauss, let alone the musical expressionism which lay just a few years ahead and would have suited the subject so well. Such hindsight is all very well, but it is Smyth’s skill as an orchestrator, and as animator of the emotional states of her characters, that make Der Wald such a compelling work. The Prologue and Epilogue are gorgeously atmospheric, and Heinrich’s central encounter with Iolanthe has passages of pure magic where the textures are lightened and the harp, woodwind and upper strings come to the fore.
The libretto – crafted by Smyth in collaboration with her male ‘muse’ and soulmate Henry Brewster – is one of those love triangles that became a frequent feature of the composer’s stage works and also (with some tragic consequences) of her private life. While couched in archaic language typical of the period, it still communicates vividly, and the cast project the text with unfailing clarity. Baritone Andrew Shore, once a Bayreuth Alberich, puts in a blustery comic turn as the pedlar (not unrelated, one feels, to Kecal the marriage broker in Smetana’s Bartered Bride), complete with his own patter-song. Bass Matthew Brook cuts a benign figure as Röschen’s father Peter, and baritone Morgan Pearse is the weak-willed Landgrave Rudolf.
It is the leading trio, however, that set the seal on this recording’s success. Romaniw is a sympathetic and ardent heroine, fresh enough to be credible but with the right kind of vocal power to ride above the often sumptuous orchestral textures. Murray is a youthful-sounding Heinrich, a clear descendent of Max in Weber’s Der Freischütz but with more resolute character, and Barnett-Jones is thrillingly imperious as the malevolent Iolanthe (banish all thoughts of G&S!), making a superb antagonist. John Andrews makes a splendid job of reanimating this long-forgotten score, with a sure feel for tempi and a mastery of its beguilingly opulent textures.
Without giving too much away, the tragic end is inevitable (although earlier eras would have devised a deus ex machina), but Nature is eternal, and as the voices of the forest return again once the main ‘action’ is over, one is left wondering what messages an enterprising stage production could tease out of this work for today’s audiences, assailed on all sides by news of climate crisis and eco-system breakdown. In the meantime, Andrews and his performers, together with Resonus Classics, have done Smyth and all of us a great service in resurrecting the composer’s breakthrough work. Given the clarity of the diction throughout, a tiny black mark for a libretto in miniscule type shouldn’t overshadow the importance of this release. Opera lovers should snap it up without delay!
Reviews
This, Der Wald’s first recording, argues its case persuasively. The conductor, John Andrews, manages to make the hour-long score sound at once concise and expansive, and we sense the hint of mystery that Smyth wanted to engender with her depiction of the primeval forest setting. ... highlights include a
lovely, harmonically adventurous chorus of spirits to open and close the
work, and a scene for the central couple blossoming into a love duet
that culminates in a heartfelt
ode to the forest itself. ... Natalya Romaniw’s bright soprano as Röschen is set off nicely by Claire Barnett-Jones’s mezzo, sounding imperious yet warm as Iolanthe... Erica JealThe Guardian 15 September 2023
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