Richard Wagner (1813-1883)
Das Liebesverbot (1836)
Friedrich – Herman Prey (baritone)
Luzio – Wolfgang Fassler (tenor)
Claudio – Robert Schunk (tenor)
Antonio – Friederich Lenz (tenor)
Angelo – Kieth Engen (bass)
Isabella – Sabine Hass (soprano)
Mariana – Pamela Coburn (soprano)
Brighella – Alfred Kuhn (bass)
Dorella – Marianne Seibel (soprano)
Pontio Pilato – Herman Sapell (tenor)
Chorus of the Bayerischen Staatsoper
Bayerisches Staatsorchester/Wolfgang Sawallisch
rec. live 09 July,1983, National Theatre, Munich, Germany
Booklet with articles in English, German and French
Orfeo C345953 [3 CDs: 155]
In his excellent review of the Oehms recording of this opera (review) Paul Corfield Godfrey lays out the circumstances by which Wagner came to create an opera which will be unfamiliar to most readers. I reproduce his summary below:
Das Liebesverbot was Wagner’s second opera, and was only given one complete performance during the composer’s lifetime. That came when Wagner was music director at the opera house in Magdeburg. He managed to get the work performed during his final days there, the first time his music had ever been staged although the ill-rehearsed staging apparently left much to be desired. A second poorly attended performance had to be abandoned when a dispute broke out between the singers backstage. Although Wagner tried to get the work presented again at various theatres during the next ten years he finally abandoned any attempt to restage it. Later in life he came to regard it with disfavour because of its reliance on Italian and French models of comic opera. He presented the score to King Ludwig II of Bavaria as a slightly embarrassed souvenir. It was finally staged again after his death, but by this time the work was hardly more than a curiosity.
In 1983 Wolfgang Sawallisch was beginning his tenure as the new intendant of the Bavarian State Opera which also happened to coincide with the Centenary of Wagner’s death. To mark the occasion Sawallisch opted to honour the composer with something unexpected: a new production of the very rarely performed Das Liebesverbot. The production opened on the exact anniversary date of Feb. 13, 1983 with a spectacular staging by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle: for the first time in the opera’s 147 year history the opera was a huge success with audiences and critics alike. This recording derives from the Bavarian Radio’s transmission of a performance with the same cast that occurred a few months after the premiere.
One can easily hear influences of Weber, Lortzing, Donizetti and Mercadante in this opera. Wagner was attempting to blend German and Italian styles. That very blend makes this a difficult opera to cast as the music calls for voices of Wagnerian amplitude but they must also display flexibility to deal with sprinklings of coloratura display. The much-put-upon heroine, Isabella, is a case in point. This is a very big sing for the soprano to deal with; it calls for the voice-type of a Senta or Leonore in Fidelio. Sabine Hass does a most admirable job and gains the sympathy of the listener. While she is not ideally steady, she has some very powerful moments of penetrating tone, and in her indignation during the Act One Finale, she spits fire to the assembled populace.
Her imprisoned brother Claudio is sung with heroic, mellifluous tone by Robert Schunk; however, he is one of the singers who trips up from Wagner’s occasional forays into coloratura. The sympathetic friend Luzio (who gets to marry Isabella in the end) is sung with some moments of strain by Wolfgang Fassler. Pamela Coburn’s voice projects well, if not with especially sweet tone, as Marianne, the long, suffering wife of the Governor. Marianne Seibel’s Dorella is spirited but she has a few vocally edgy moments. Alfred Kuhn is a sonorously comic Police Chief, Brighella.
The best performance of all comes from Hermann Prey as Friedrich,the hypocritical Governor of Palermo. His powerful tone and stage presence lend dominance to this puritanical character. There is an accumulation of vibrancy to his upper register that at times threatens to overwhelm one’s audio equipment, but the overall beauty of his voice is really something to revel in. His long aria in the Second Act is a true highlight of this set.
Wolfgang Sawallisch conducts with an agility that is animated and engaged throughout this long score. The Bavarian State Opera ensemble seems to relish the challenge of the unfamiliar piece and throw themselves wholeheartedly into the carnival atmosphere of the proceedings. The sound of this live recording is more than adequate, although not so splendid as on the aforementioned Oehms set, from the wonderful Frankfurt Alter Oper concert hall. Here the onstage antics of the carnival ensure that there are plenty of stage noises throughout. A generous amount of applause has been left in, from which it is clear that the Munich audience was very enthusiastic about the entire event.
Mike Parr
Posted by Paul Corfield Godfrey on March 6, 2024, 12:17 pm
Mike Parr in his review of the Sawallisch recording of Wagner’s early opera quoted from my own review of the later Weigle recording back in 2013, and gave a link to that review.
However when that review was originally published I did then add a postscript some months later which was added to this message board but has since been deleted. Since it does have some bearing on the matter of the cuts made by Sawallisch to the score, I repeat its contents here with the request that it should be read in conjunction with my own review:
“When reviewing the newly issued recording of Das Liebesverbot, I commented that although the cuts made in the score were extensive the composer himself might have wished to make sbridgements in the score if he had ever had the chance to supervise a production in his later years. In making that judgement I was guided by my reading of the passages which had been omitted in the vocal score. I did however comment that there was only one complete recording of the opera, derived from Edward Downes’s studio broadcast in 1976, which had been only intermittently available.
BBC Radio 3 broadcast that same performance again last week, and this gave me the first opportunity for many years to listen to the work absolutely complete (and the first time I had been able to do so with score in hand). I now think I may have been too ready to admit the desirability of cutting the score as considerably as Weigle and Sawallisch (not to mention Heger) did in their recordings. Much of what looked in the vocal score like simple repetition in fact contained an interesting degree of variety in the counterpoint and harmony which mean that the cut score actually sounds less adventurous than it really is; for example the closing march (cut in all other recordings), which branches out into quite unexpected directions. Even when Wagner is apparently having difficulty bringing an extended ensemble to a close, the sheer piling of one coda onto another has a decidedly Beethovenian tint.
The sound in the BBC recording is not ideally clear, and the singing is certainly less well captured than in Weigle’s new recording; but having heard Downes in the complete score (and he is also considerably livelier than Weigle in places) I would now suggest that his version should be the recording of choice for Wagner completists.”
I would still strongly suggest that Wagner enthusiasts who wish to acquire a recording of this opera would be better served by Downes than any rival version. Transfers of the broadcast have appeared on CD over the years.
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