Hans Werner Henze (1926-2012)
Das Floß der Medusa (The Raft of the Medusa)
Oratorio volgare in due parti (1967-8)
Sarah Wegener, La Mort (soprano)
Dietrich Henschel, Jean-Charles (baritone)
Sven-Eric Bechtolf , Charon (speaker)
Arnold Schoenberg Choir, Vienna Boys Choir, ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra/Cornelius Meister
rec. live 1-2 November 2017, Konzerthaus, Vienna
Text and translation included
Capriccio C5482 [74]
Henze seems to me a very uneven composer. At his best – for example the last four symphonies or the opera The Bassarids – he is the equal of any postwar composer. On the other hand, there are works which appear to epitomise modish triviality. So I was interested to receive this once notorious work for review, to see what I thought of it.
It was written at the height of Henze’s enthusiasm for left-wing protest, as a requiem for the Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara, who was murdered in 1967. The premiere in 1968 was disrupted by protests from both the left and the right and had to be abandoned, though the dress rehearsal was recorded and issued by DG. This incident was notorious at the time and, like the riot at the premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, has given the work a fame independent of its actual qualities.
It is a secular oratorio – Henze himself called it oratorio volgare e militare – presenting the terrible story of the wreck of the frigate Medusa, which ran aground off the coast of North Africa in 1816. There were four hundred people on board. The officers and other senior people got away in lifeboats, but 146 men and one woman were put on a hastily improvised raft, which was towed by one of the boats. However, the towing was difficult and those in the boat cut the towing rope and left the raft to its fate. When they in the boat reached land, they did nothing to help those they had abandoned. On the raft there was little food, no water but some wine. Many people fell overboard or were pushed; survivors died from sickness or dehydration and some resorted to cannibalism. After thirteen days, the brig Argus discovered the raft. Only fifteen men were still alive. Two of them wrote an account of the disaster which was widely read and which is said to have contributed to the downfall of the Bourbons in 1830. Géricault completed his famous painting in 1819; a copy of this is in the booklet and the box. Henze saw the story as showing up the selfish and irresponsible attitude of the ruling class, not only of that time, and this is a protest work.
The libretto is by Ernst Schnabel, a writer and pioneer of radio documentary. The work is presented by a narrator, who is also Charon, the sinister boatman in Greek mythology who takes the souls of the dead to the underworld. There are two solo singing roles: Jean-Charles, a baritone, who in the painting waves the red flag which attracts the Argus but does not long survive the rescue, and La Mort (Death), a soprano. There is a boys’ choir an adult mixed choir and a very large orchestra which includes such rarities as an oboe d’amore, a heckelphone, a bass trumpet, saxophones, ophicleides, a large battery of percussion and so on. In performance, the chorus stands on the left-hand side of the stage, representing the living. La Mort is on the right. She is gradually joined by chorus members representing those who have died. Although the main text is in German, the dead sing passages from Dante’s Commedia, in a way which is quite disconcerting to those who recognise their original sources. In the main structure I see an influence from Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex, which he called an opera-oratorio, and which also has a narrator presenting the action.
The work is in two parts, each divided into several sections, but it plays continuously. There is a great deal of narration, so much so that the work is almost a spoken drama with incidental music. The music is nearly always simply illustrative: there are no proper individual numbers and only two passages of sustained writing: towards the end of the first part and in the middle of the second. The vocal writing for the two principals is mainly declamation; that for the choruses is fine, but there is a good deal of overlapping of sung lines, so that they can only be followed with the text in hand. As the situation on the raft gets increasingly hopeless, the diminishing group of survivors gets more and desperate and finally delirious. At the end, the rescue is dealt with very briefly and Charon says: ’Those who did survive, having learned a lesson from reality, returned to the world again, eager to overthrow it.’ This last statement seems to me wishful thinking by Schnabel and Henze rather than an account of what happened.
The work is a harrowing one, but for me that is more because of the story it recounts than because of Henze’s music. This seems to me rarely to get beyond illustrative effects. The large orchestra and the rare instruments do not justify their inclusion. The best passages are those presenting the living passing over to the side of the dead. Although some see it as a modern classic it seems to me very much a document of its time, of historical interest and importance certainly, but not more.
The performance is an excellent one. Sven-Eric Bechtolf does his best with the very wordy narration. Dietrich Henschel is eloquent as Jean-Charles and is a pleasure to listen to. Sarah Wegener as La Mort has a lovely voice but very indistinct enunciation. The choirs do nobly and the orchestra does all that is asked of it. Cornelius Meister, an old hand at this kind of thing, conducts with dedication.
Capriccio have made this a really quality production. The single disc is housed in a box with a substantial booklet which contains the entire text in German and Italian, and an English translation. The recording is fine. There are two other recordings: the original one which was last seen in the DG Henze collection and a 2019 one conducted by Peter Eötvös (review). I haven’t heard these, but I find it hard to think either would be better than this. However, I note that this recording has taken seven years to be issued and I wonder why. Still, Capriccio has been doing Henze proud with recent issues of two of his operas, among other things. I do hope they will give us a complete recording of König Hirsch, the most glaring gap in the Henze discography. Meanwhile, anyone who wants to know what the fuss was all about should be happy with this.
Stephen Barber
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