Richard Wagner (1813-1883)
Die Feen (1833)
Der Feekönig – Kurt Moll (Bass)
Ada – Linda Esther Gray (Soprano)
Farzana – Kari Lövaas (Soprano)
Zemina – Krisztina Laki (Soprano)
Arindal – John Alexander (Tenor)
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra & Chorus/Wolfgang Sawallisch
rec. live, July 1983, Munich National Theatre, and Herkulesaal, Munich Residenz. DDD
German text, English and French translations included.
Orfeo C062833 [3 CDs: 165]
It is a fairly safe assumption that very few amongst Wagner aficionados have ever become acquainted with Die Feen. The opera was written during the period of time that Wagner was living and working as a choirmaster in Wurzburg. At only 20 years old he was already showing great promise of having the ability to create such an enormous work. The opera was inspired by a Gozzi play, La Donna Serpente, which had been used as the basis of an opera more than once in the previous century. Wagner and his family tried numerous times to get his opera staged but it didn’t happen until 1883, after Wagner’s death. At some point he decided to present the autograph score for it along with those for Das Liebesverbot and Rienzi as a gift to King Ludwig II of Bavaria The manuscripts all seem to have been destroyed in Hitler’s bunker at the end of WW II.
The music of Die Feen blends the musical worlds of Beethoven with Weber, and a bit of Marschner added in. Wagner’s theatrical instincts of knowing when to allow the dramatic pace to relax and provide the singers and listeners with some repose would become much more developed in his future operas.
The live performance recorded here was put on as part of the Munich Opera Festival in 1983 and seems to have been very well received by the audience. The overture is an urgently dramatic orchestral tone poem which inspires an intense performance from Wolfgang Sawallisch and his Bavarian orchestra. Act One contains a lot more of similarly dramatic music with no let-up in the pacing; it becomes a bit wearing on listener and singers alike. Things improve hugely in Act Two which has generally the best music of the opera. The hero, Arindal, is sung by the clear and penetrating tenor voice of John Alexander. He has a very attractive, quavering sound which is always falls pleasantly on one’s ear. He is heard at his best in the Act 3 mad scene. Wagner’s heroine is the fairy princess Ada, one of those lung-busting soprano roles like Abigaille in Nabucco, and Leonore in Fidelio. I suspect, however that Ada is far more punishing on the soprano than either of those two roles. Here she is sung by the very capable Linda Esther Gray. She has a lot of music to sing and most of it is loud with plenty of rapid passagework to negotiate. Miss Gray succeeds admirably on all counts, and only once or twice does her volume seem to lack a solid core of tone to back it up. Her voice is large enough that it occasionally drowns out the tenor in a few places. Her biggest scene comes in Act 2 and she manages it splendidly.
Among the numerous secondary characters in this opera, Lora, Arindal’s sister, is sung by soprano June Anderson. She sings very sweetly on the whole but I note some tonal spread when she applies pressure on her voice in the upper register. Her fiancé, Morald, is impressively sung by bass Roland Hermann, his sound being both virile and elegant. Balancing this is the second comic couple, Drolla (Cheryl Studer) and Gernot (Jan-Hendrick Rootering): their Act 2 duet has more than a touch of Papagena and Papageno to it, and judging by the applause it was well appreciated by the audience. Miss Studer was still early in her career but among this cast she wins the vocal honours for demonstrating a personality in the voice. Mr Rootering is a solid bass with an attractive tone and he manages the comedic parts without going overboard. In Act 3 we become introduced to Groma the magician, a role sung entirely off stage. Roland Bracht, yet another bass, is impressive here which can’t be an easy achievement when one is not onstage.
In Act 3 we find the most beautiful piece in the entire opera, a chorale-like prayer in which Sawallisch leads his Bavarian forces and soloists in a spectacular example of the type of music in which time seems to stand still. The Bavarian Radio chorus are splendid throughout the recording, as is the orchestra. When the finale arrives we are introduced to Kurt Moll’s Fairy King. A star singer for such a small role, he really does make a marvellous impression with his finely focused sound. Throughout the recording Wolfgang Sawallisch shapes the musical phrases beautifully which shows the importance he placed on this music. Sawallisch makes numerous cuts to the score but I rather suspect that it is not necessarily an advantage to hear it absolutely complete.
The booklet contains a scholarly essay about the opera which focuses itself on the influence of Wagner’s family on the composition of this opera. A full libretto with translations is included.
Having now heard this, it I can appreciate the major steps forward Wagner took afterwards; even by the time he wrote such early works as Das Liebesverbot and Rienzi he had clearly already learned a lot from writing this opera.
Mike Parr
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Other cast
Lora – June Anderson (Soprano)
Morald – Roland Hermann (Baritone)
Gernot – Jan Hendrik-Rootering (Bass)
Drolla – Cheryl Studer (soprano)
Gunther – Norbert Orth (Tenor)
Harald – Karl Helm (Bass)
Ein Bote – Friederich Lenz (Tenor)
Die Stimme des Zaubers Gromma – Roland Bracht (Bass)
