Zemlinsky - Eine florentinische Tragodie
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Label: Pentatone
Cat No: PTC5186739
Format: Hybrid SACD
Number of Discs: 1
Genre: Opera
Release Date: 14th June 2024
Contents
Artists
Ausrine Stundyte (soprano)Nikolai Schukoff (tenor)
John Lundgren (baritone)
Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra
Conductor
Marc AlbrechtWorks
Eine florentinische Tragodie (A Florentine Tragedy), op.16Artists
Ausrine Stundyte (soprano)Nikolai Schukoff (tenor)
John Lundgren (baritone)
Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra
Conductor
Marc AlbrechtAbout
Dutch National Opera presents Alexander von Zemlinsky’s Eine florentinische Tragödie (1917), with Marc Albrecht conducting the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and Ausrine Stundyte (Bianca), Nikolai Schukoff (Guido Bardi) and John Lundgren (Simone) as soloists. Eine florentinische Tragödie (1917) fully adheres to George Bernard Shaw’s famous dictum that every opera is “when a tenor and soprano want to make love, but are prevented from doing so by a baritone”. Yet Zemlinsky’s piece presents this core narrative in its most condensed form, and its conclusion is one of the most original and enigmatic in opera history. This suspenseful, opulent score is in good hands with Marc Albrecht and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, whose proficiency in late-Romantic repertoire was crowned with a 2021 Opus Klassik Award for their recording of Zemlinsky’s symphonic poem Die Seejungfrau. The three soloists are all seasoned in Wagnerian and late-Romantic repertoire, having appeared on the world’s greatest opera stages. Oper! Magazine has crowned Dutch National Opera as Opera House of the Year 2024, an accolade that the company also received from the International Opera Awards in 2016.
Cast:
- Guido Bardi, Prince of Florence: Nikolai Schukoff (tenor)
- Simone, a merchant: John Lundgren (baritone)
- Bianca, his wife: Ausrine Stundyte (soprano)
Cast:
- Guido Bardi, Prince of Florence: Nikolai Schukoff (tenor)
- Simone, a merchant: John Lundgren (baritone)
- Bianca, his wife: Ausrine Stundyte (soprano)
Sound/Video
Paused
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1Ouvertüre
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2So langsam, Weib?
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3Ich dank’ Euch, Herr
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4Wackrer Simone, genug, ich bitte Euch
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5Ja, ich vergass, und will nicht wieder Anstoß geben
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6Was gibt es Neues, mein Prinz?
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7Wie er gleich einem schalen Krämer spricht!
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8Genug! Zur Freude reif ist diese Nacht
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9Nun, mein Prinz, stosst an
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10Holdsel’ge Bianca, der schale Krämer langweilt mich
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11Simone, jetzt muß ich nach Hause gehn
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12Bianca, hol mein Schwert!
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13Warum hast du mir nicht gesagt
Europadisc Review
Composed in 1915–16 and premiered in Stuttgart in 1917, Alexander von Zemlinsky’s Eine florentinische Tragödie (‘A Florentine Tragedy’) is the first of two one-act operas based on plays by Oscar Wilde which together helped establish the composer’s reputation following their long overdue revival in the early 1980s. The plot is a simple one, almost stark, a single scene played in a continuous 50-minute span. In George Bernard Shaw’s succinct formulation, the essence of opera is ‘when a tenor and soprano want to make love, but are prevented from doing so by a baritone’, and A Florentine Tragedy fits the template perfectly, albeit with an alarming twist in the tale.
In fact, it is the baritone – the merchant Simone – who has by far the most singing time in this claustrophobic menage â trois set in Renaissance Florence. Arriving home from a business trip, he is surprised to discover that his wife Bianca is in the company of a young man who turns out to be Prince Guido, son of the Duke of Florence. At first fastidiously polite, the voluble host extends his hospitality and plies his wares to the prince. But he soon grasps the true nature of the situation, with the surreptitious asides between Bianca and the prince not going unnoticed. With the amorous pair doing little to disguise their contempt for the tradesman, tensions gradually rise, until Simone challenges Guido to a duel, first with swords and then daggers. To avoid any spoilers, let’s just say that the outcome – and Bianca’s reaction to it – is a surprising one, and thereby lies much of the opera’s fascination.
Although there are echoes of Puccini’s Il tabarro and Rachmaninov’s Francesca da Rimini, the opera is suffused with lush post-Wagnerian harmonies and sweeping melodic lines that owe most to Strauss, Mahler and Zemlinsky’s brother-in-law, Schoenberg. The overture, like the introduction to Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, is clearly a musical depiction of unbridled sexual activity, and its music returns tellingly in the lovers’ music before the climactic, lurid duel.
The power of this work goes far beyond the simple dramatic outlines sketched here, and in recent years it has received several fine recordings (the most recent, from BR Klassik, just a few weeks ago). The strength of this new one from Pentatone is that it originates from a 2017 stage production by the Dutch National Opera, and though stage noises are mostly restrained, the dramatic tension is palpable. In large measure this is due to the expert conducting of Marc Albrecht, who deploys the forces of the Netherlands Philharmonic to powerful effect, allowing the music to bloom where needed, but keeping a sure finger on the underlying pulse. The extravagant orchestration is vividly caught by the Pentatone team, yet the voices remain clearly audible throughout.
Leading the cast is John Lundgren as Simone, who endows the character with both quick wits and nobility. He may not have the tightly-focussed lieder singer’s sensibilities displayed by Christopher Maltman on the BR Klassik recording, but he is marvellous at observing the quick changes of mood indicated in detail in Zemlinsky’s score. And as the work progresses, so his stature and the emotional temperature rise inexorably until the final pay-off. Soprano Ausrine Stundyte captures perfectly the ambiguous nature of Bianca’s passions: her lust for the prince, and hatred for her ‘dull’ husband, while tenor Nikolai Schukoff has just enough heroic timbre (and not a little sweetness) to make the character plausible without overshadowing the married couple. It’s Lundgren and Albrecht, however, who make this performance so gripping. The astonishing colours of Zemlinsky’s score are radiantly apparent, and the work builds to a thrilling climax, which puts one in mind of a sort of alternative-universe Wozzeck where the (anti-)hero is less unhinged and downtrodden, and possessing infinitely more guile.
Unlike the BR Klassik set, Pentatone’s contains a full libretto and translation, together with an excellent introductory essay by Kasper van Kooten. For a turn-of-the-century ‘fix’, rich with layers of Freudian subtext and dripping with Viennese Secessionist atmosphere, this release is now a strong recommendation for one of Zemlinsky’s operatic masterpieces.
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