TUESDAY June 21, 7:30 p.m. (finishing at approx. 10.45 p.m.)
FIERRABRAS
An opera in three acts
by Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Libretto by Joseph Kupelwieser (1791-1866)
First performed in Karlsruhe in 1897
Cast
Production
A 2014 production from the Salzburg Festival
Directed by Peter Stein
Stage design by Ferdinand Wögerbauer
Costume design by Annamaria Heinreich
Lighting design by Joachim Barth
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and Vienna State Opera Chorus
conducted by Ingo Metzmacher
History of the opera
The libretto concerns the adventures of the Moorish knight Fierrabras and his eventual conversion to Christianity. It is based on stories surrounding Charlemagne, including tales of how Fierrabras' sister falls in love with one of Charlemagne's knights, and the love interest between Charlemagne's daughter Emma and another of his knights, Eginhard.
The opera was never performed in Schubert's lifetime. In 1835 (seven years after his death), a concert version of several numbers was staged in Vienna. The first full performance was not until 1897, in Karlsruhe. This performance was edited for the tastes of the day, resulting in scenes being cut, and ballet interludes injected into the performance.
In the 20th century, the opera received radio broadcasts in 1926, 1959 and 1971. Concert versions were presented in 1978 in Perugia, and in 1980 in Aachen, and various staged revivals took place in the early 1980s. In 1988, Claudio Abbado directed performances of a complete staging of the opera (likely the first performances that used all of Schubert's music) at the Theatre an der Wien. Tonight's screening marks the first time the work was performed at the Salzburg Festival.
Synopsis
ACT IEmma, the daughter of King Karl (from the German name for Charlemagne, Karl der Grosse), is in love with Eginhard. Their love must be kept secret since Karl does not approve. Karl's knights, led by Roland, have defeated the Moors and captured Fierrabras, son of the Moorish prince Boland. Karl does not imprison Fierrabras.
When they are brought to Karl's castle, Fierrabras spies Emma, and recognizes her as someone he fell in love with in Rome. Eginhard and Emma meet in the garden at night, but are interrupted by Fierrabras. The lovers plead with Fierrabras to protect Eginhard from Karl. Fierrabras agrees, and Eginhard makes his escape. The king approaches, and, thinking Fierrabras is trying to kidnap Emma, has him thrown in chains. As the act ends, Eginhard and the knights are preparing to leave.
ACT IIEginhard (without clarifying the matter concerning Emma and Fierrabras) has been sent to Boland with Roland and Karl's other knights for peace talks. The Moors surprise Eginhard, capture him, and bring him to the Moorish castle, where Boland and his daughter Florinda are concerned over Fierrabras' fate. Eginhard informs them of Fierrabras' imprisonment.
The rest of Karl's knights arrive for the peace talks. Boland, upset over Fierrabras' imprisonment, takes them prisoner and condemns them to death. Among the knights, his daughter Florinda recognizes Roland, (with whom she fell in love while in Rome) and decides to try to help them. She manages to free Eginhard, and, after a brief interlude with Roland, frees the knights from the castle prison. The knights, after a battle in which Roland is captured, are returned to the prison, where Boland is upset over Florinda's behaviour.
ACT IIIEmma, who is waiting for Eginhard's return, confesses to her father that Fierrabras is innocent, and that she and Eginhard are in love. Karl frees Fierrabras, and they leave with Eginhard to go to the Moorish castle to free the imprisoned knights. The knights are being led to the execution pyre.
Florinda pleads with Boland to spare Roland. In anger, Boland says that if she loves Roland, she can die with him. Karl, Eginhard, and Fierrabras arrive just in time to stop the executions, and convince Boland to release the knights. Karl and Boland make peace, allowing Roland and Florinda to unite, as well as Eginhard and Emma. Fierrabras joins Karl's knights.
NEXT MONTH: Tuesday, July 12 7.30 pm
The Gambler
According to writer Julia Spinoza, Prokofiev wrote this Dostoyevsky-based opera in “a state of almost drunken frenzy,” completing the score in five and a half months in 1916. Daniel Barenboim and director Dmitri Tcherniakov, who staged our version at the Berlin State Opera in 2008, “likewise found the score infectious … creating an insanely delirious, gripping production.”Come and judge this exciting work for yourself.
Click here to view a subtitled excerpt (Act 1 finale) in a rather different production by Zurich Opera in 2006
(Jonas Kauffmann plays Fierrabras)
The finale of this Salzburg 2014 production of Fierrabras
From Richard Wigmore's review of this production in Gramophone:
Many moments of ravishing lyricism
Composed in 1823, when Vienna was in the grip of a Rossini craze, Schubert’s last completed opera remained unperformed in his lifetime and dealt a final blow to his hopes of fame and fortune in the theatre. Josef Kupelwieser’s clunky libretto, set amid the struggles between Charlemagne and the Moors, certainly did him no favours. The characters are pasteboard and the action is propelled, often in spoken dialogue, by ludicrous coincidences and ploys such as a cache of weapons conveniently hidden under the floorboards. Schubert – who never had the chance to see what worked on the stage – sometimes writes music that is too gemütlich for the situation. The opera’s heroic aspirations can be undercut by Singspiel jollity, as in the ‘friendship’ duet between the noble Moor Fierrabras and the Christian knight Roland (shades here of Die Zauberflöte).
Yet amid occasional longueurs and incongruities are many moments of ravishing Schubertian lyricism, above all the Italianate duet for Florinda and her maid Maragond, and Eginhard’s nocturnal serenade to Emma (Charlemagne’s daughter), which turns magically from minor to major as she responds to his wooing. Elsewhere, some of the ensembles – a rather Mozartian quintet in Act 2, a quartet in Act 3 – and the superb Act 1 finale generate real dramatic tension, hinting at the operatic masterpiece Schubert might have achieved given a first-class libretto.
Peter Stein’s Salzburg Festival production mercifully eschews a modern – and potentially inflammatory – Western-Islamic Konzept and sets Fierrabras more or less in its historical period. Drawing on theatrical techniques of the Biedermeier era, he and designer Ferdinand Wögerbauer use gauze backdrops evocative of old engravings to create a series of attractive tableaux vivants. Stein never falls into the trap of livening up the many static choral episodes with gratuitous ‘action’. Unpretentious and consistently pleasing on the eye, his staging is a refreshing contrast to so many productions that seek to shock and disconcert with maximum scenic ugliness.
As Stein has stressed in an interview, the core of the opera lies in the two pairs of star-crossed lovers: Emma and Eginhard, and the Christian knight Roland and Florinda, daughter of the Moorish prince Boland (no librettist worth his salt could have planted a Boland and a Roland in the same opera). All four roles are convincingly taken, with the palm going to Julia Kleiter’s Emma, alluringly voiced and phrased, and soaring without shrillness into the stratosphere. As Florinda, Dorothea Röschmann displays her trademark histrionic intensity. Her thrillingly fiery Act 2 solo – one of only two true arias in the opera – rightly elicits a storm of applause.
Benjamin Bernheim, a new name to me, fields an ardent, youthful lyric tenor as the unheroic knight Eginhard, while Markus Werba sings Roland’s music with incisive vigour. Fierrabras himself, the Moorish prince who renounces both Emma and his Islamic faith, is portrayed powerfully by Michael Schade. Peter Kálmán rants and blusters effectively as Boland, whose ‘rage’ aria evokes a Moorish Pizarro; and Georg Zeppenfeld brings a resonant basso cantante and benign dignity to the role of Charlemagne.
A word, too, for the contribution of the Vienna State Opera Chorus, both sonorous and sensitive, with some budding Siegfrieds among the tenors. Ingo Metzmacher conducts with evidently passionate belief in Schubert’s score, paces it shrewdly and elicits classy playing from the Vienna Philharmonic. Kupelwieser’s barely competent dramaturgy will always bar Fierrabras from the operatic mainstream. But it is a work of many musical delights, and this vocally strong, visually handsome Salzburg production does it proud.
- Richard Wigmore, September 2015
