I am indebted to
http://shopping.yahoo.com
where a useful online biography of Kienzl by Bruce Eder filled
in much background. I also found much useful history in Henry
Louise de la Grange’s massive study of Mahler, currently in three
volumes, soon to be five, wherein Kienzl plays many a bit-part.
Wilhelm Kienzl was a major figure in Austrian
music and culture from the 1890s until the 1930s. He began studying
piano and violin very early, and was composing by 12. At Graz
University, he studied composition, philosophy, and physics, and
also wrote music reviews. He attended the first performance of
the Ring at Bayreuth in 1876 and became a Wagner devotee, a fact
that shows in his music despite his later declared aim to shake
off the influence. In Don Quixote Kienzl sounds like a
sort of post-Rienzi Wagnerite rather than post-Ring.
He also studied with Liszt and his admiration for Schumann shows
quite strongly. He began writing opera in the 1884 but it was
10 years before he completed what proved to be his most enduring
work, Der Evangelimann. He was left financially independent
by its success. In later life he was isolated musically because
of his inability to accept the ideas of the second Viennese school
whilst still wanting to be seen to be modern. He wrote operas
into the 1920s, after which he gave up large-scale composition.
Achieving fame must be at least partly a matter
of luck. Why do we hear performances of symphonies by Vaughan
Williams but rarely by Rubbra? Why are there dozens of performances
of worthy Mozart operas like Il Seraglio and almost never
a performance of J.C.F. Hæffner’s Elektra? So it
is with Kienzl’s Don Quixote. That this was an early failure
and never established itself in the repertoire may be at least
partly down to its rejection by the then all-powerful director
of the Vienna State Opera, Gustav Mahler. Kienzl knew Mahler quite
well and was clearly fascinated by Mahler’s extravagant and radical
music. He attended an early performance of the Resurrection
symphony and stayed when others withdrew in horror! The honour
was not returned, it seems! Of Kienzl’s many operas only one,
Der Evangelimann has ever achieved any success (EMI CD
5663702 (2 discs), Lothar Zagrosek, Siegfried Jerusalem, Helen
Donath, Ortun Wenkel, Kurt Moll etc). It seems to me that Don
Quixote is fully deserving of a place in the repertoire. It
does have problems. It needs a large orchestra. It needs some
very able soloists (particularly a bass who can sing prolonged
passages in falsetto). It is also nearly three and a half
hours long. But none of these problems are insurmountable. We
manage to perform Die Frau öhne Schatten despite its
vast orchestra and many a modern opera requires soloists to utilise
a "false voice". If challenged to suggest some operas which could
be dropped from the repertoire to make place for Kienzl’s splendid
Don Quixote I might suggest dropping Humperdinck’s dull
Hansel and Gretel for starters.
Kienzl describes Don Quixote as a tragi-comedy.
The comedy is somewhat Germanic. The tragedy is as affecting as
the wonderfully melancholy closing bars of Strauss’s Don Quixote.
The opera contains several descriptive interludes which are themselves
good mini symphonic poems. This was noted in Kienzl’s day, for
suites of these interludes were given at least once or twice in
concert performance. Kienzl’s libretto is complex but dramatically
quite successful. He reduces Cervantes’ gigantic novel to a series
of scenes which he links by a sub plot of his own devising. As
noted in Pachl’s thorough and fascinating booklet essays he "tells
Cervantes’ story more completely than other dramatisations. The
dramatic conflict and the catastrophe of the main figure brought
about by a plot devised by his niece Mercedes and her lover is
Kienzl’s own idea". This device apparently heavily influenced
the modern musical Man of La Mancha.
It is not easy to select particular passages
for comment when so much is so good. I would nonetheless pick
out the dramatic conclusion of Act 1 where several minor and several
major characters combine with the chorus to achieve a vital and
energetic finale with Don Quixote galloping away on his horse
and Sancho Panza tossed in a blanket for non-payment of his drinks
bill. Act 2 contains a tremendous dance sequence during which
the plot does not pause but carries on in parallel. This is the
part of the opera that requires Don Clavijo, sung by Thomas Hay,
to sing his long falsetto solo. I did feel this joke was rather
prolonged. Act 3 starts with a long duet between Mercedes and
her lover Carrasco in which they contemplate how they are to wrench
Mercedes’ father, the Don, out of his all-encompassing fantasy
world and return him to reality. This beautiful and heartfelt
music shows the seriousness with which Kienzl treated the tragic
aspects of his comedy. Act 3 contains several such passages. The
Don himself reflects tenderly on his quest to honour his imaginary
lady Dulcinea in another beautiful passage. Mercedes, Sancho Panza
and the Don join in a passionate trio where the daughter and servant
protest at the actions they are forced to take in response to
the Don’s addled wishes whilst the Don continues to bemoan his
failure to attain Dulcinea’s approbation. The end of the opera
is genuinely moving. Don Quixote dies of a broken heart, having
realised what a fool he has made of himself, and Sancho Panza
crouches over the Don’s motionless body unable to accept that
he is dead.
The performance by the main soloists is consistently
of a high standard. The playing of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra
is so convincing that one could almost believe they played it
regularly which they undoubtedly have not. This recording is the
first opportunity we have to enjoy and assess the complete opera.
When this live performance was broadcast in 1998 it had to be
truncated because no one expected it to last quite as long. We
are indebted to CPO for this complete issue and still more for
the magnificent documentation they have provided including a full
libretto in German and English. The recording quality is typical
of that which we have grown to expect from German radio stations:
it is clean, very clear and notably spacious. I applied a little
surround processing during parts of my audition and it was very
successful in creating the feeling of "being there".
Wilhelm Kienzl was right inside Don Quixote:
"I myself was a Don Quixote, a crazy fellow", he wrote. Kienzl
unnoticed and unsung in 1941 in Vienna. This recording allows
us to reconsider a figure who was clearly much more important
than we have hitherto realised.
Dave Billinge
Berlin Radio Chorus