Schoenberg once said
of his forgotten brother-in-law, "Zemlinsky
can wait". The wait was long, but
the last two decades have witnessed
a quantum leap in Zemlinsky’s reputation,
with stage productions and recordings
emerging apace. Each of his operas has
its distinct orchestral and harmonic
coloration — what Verdi would have called
its tinta. The composer’s galley
work as pit conductor reveals itself
in clear characterisation and faultless
pacing, as well as a natural affinity
for the human voice. At least two, A
Florentine Tragedy and The Dwarf
— both taken from Oscar Wilde —
are masterpieces. All of them stage
well. They also make absorbing CD listening
for the theatre of the mind.
Zemlinsky’s eighth
and last opera Der König Kandaules
took sixty years to reach the stage.
Started in 1936 soon after he finished
his oriental fable Der Kreidekreis
("The Chalk Circle", from
the Klabund play which Brecht also utilised)
the new opera was swiftly completed
in short score. However orchestration
was abandoned three-quarters of the
way through the first of its three acts
following Zemlinsky’s escape from Nazi
Austria in 1938. Conductor Arthur Bodanzky
encouraged the ailing composer to hope
for a New York Metropolitan premiere,
but his initial enthusiasm cooled once
he hit upon "impossible" elements
in the libretto.
Impossible? Certainly
for 1940s New York. This was not the
first Zemlinsky work to feature obsessive
or perverse sexuality — both the Wilde
operas as well as his celebrated Lyric
Symphony do that — but here the
sex is squarely on stage. Based not
on Friedrich Hebbel’s 19th century dignified
classic Gyges und sein Ring but
on André Gide’s fin-de-siècle
take on the Greek myth, Der König
Kandaules is the fable of the rich
King who has everything, including the
most beautiful wife in the world. Tired
of fawning courtiers, Kandaules develops
an intense friendship with a brutal
young fisherman, Gyges. His generosity
(decadence?) prompts him to share everything
he has with his new friend, including
Queen Nyssia herself. With the aid of
the King’s Ring of Invisibility, found
inside a fish he himself caught, Gyges
spends the night with Nyssia. Appalled,
she orders him to kill Candaules. This
he does, and the story ends with the
peasant presented to the court as the
new King. Hebbel’s play centred on the
nobility of the "natural man"
Gyges, but for Gide and Zemlinsky the
King was the fascinating figure. Part
poet, part voyeur, intensely self-aware
but in the grip of an obsession focused
as much on Gyges as the Queen, the character
of Kandaules reflects many of the ambiguities
and tensions of 20th century Western
High Art.
The composer died in
1942 having laid his final testament
aside. Fifty years later, Antony Beaumont
(acclaimed for his completion of Busoni’s
Doktor Faust) was chosen by Zemlinsky’s
widow to put the score in order and
finish the instrumentation, copious
notes for which existed in the partially
revised short score. In 1993 Gerd Albrecht
recorded a teaser of extracts from Act
3 for Capriccio, showcasing Franz Grundheber
as Gyges. The complete work followed
three years later under the same conductor,
in a live recording spliced together
during the initial Hamburg run. Beaumont
himself recently conducted the Act 3
Prelude — a graphical depiction of Gyges’
night of passion with Nyssia, lubriciously
sliding trombones after Lady Macbeth
of Mtsensk and all — for Volume
3 of his Zemlinsky survey for Chandos.
Zemlinsky’s opera is
his artistic testament, a late oozing
of the hectic sensuality of The Dwarf
and A Florentine Tragedy, cross-fertilised
by the austere modernity explored in
Der Kreidekreis, a music theatre
piece much closer to Kurt Weill than
Strauss or Schoenberg. The sense of
summation is heightened by prominent
references to motifs from The Dwarf,
the Lyric Symphony and others
of his works. Mixing spoken dialogue
with a rich chromatic melos which
always stays this side of the tonal
line, the score gathers power as the
shadows close on Kandaules. The elegant,
bland courtiers’ banter of Act 1 fines
down to nocturnal sensuality for the
central dialogues, culminating in the
stripping bare of both the Queen and
Candaules’ mental obsession. The last
act spotlights Gyges, caught between
friendship and the explosive sex of
his night with Nyssia, and Zemlinsky’s
music — magnificently realised by Beaumont
— becomes progressively more robust
as catastrophe approaches. The thunderous
march which dominates the final pages
as the Queen and her new consort take
power after the ultimate consummation
of the murder hints, maybe, at the brutality
of the totalitarian regime which had
destroyed what was left of Zemlinsky’s
Viennese civilization, a regime led
by vigorous men strong in feeling but
weak in everything else. Not nice, but
perhaps (the music tells us) inevitable.
Now the first night
of the controversial 2002 Salzburg Festival
production has joined Capriccio’s Hamburg
premiere set on disc. This is in Andante’s
chaste but elegant house style, scrupulously
documented and illustrated with production
shots. The controversy was all about
Christine Mielitz’s stark staging rather
than the musical side, which was generally
admired. Little wonder, for the theatrical
sweep and vigour of Kent Nagano’s reading
grips from the start and never lets
go. Despite some fluffs and lapses of
co-ordination there’s added light and
shade, an inexorable momentum compared
against the Capriccio issue. Gerd Albrecht
is never less than well regimented,
but although his Hamburg strings capture
Zemlinsky’s soaring climaxes with breathtaking
power, it is Nagano’s orchestra which
better evokes the headily perfumed,
nocturnal air which pervades the score.
Der König Kandaules
stands or falls by the quality of its
principals, and the Salzburg men make
up in theatrical force what they lack
in subtlety. American tenor Robert Brubaker
tackles the marathon title role with
power and finesse, emphasising Kandaules’s
questing, fevered intelligence at the
expense of the lyric introspection James
O’Neal quarried in the Hamburg run.
Wolfgang Schöne’s long experience
shows itself in verbal clarity, musical
solidity … and crumbling security at
forte and above. His Gyges sounds
conventional besides the late Monte
Pederson’s memorably individual Hamburg
creation, an ironic Wozzeck with brain
cells intact, far better sung.
With Nina Stemme the
advantage swings back to Salzburg. Voluptuously
seductive on the ear, her Nyssia reveals
a powerful, idiosyncratic lyric soprano
very much at the top of her game, thrilling
above the stave, steely in the dignity
of her resolve when the true begetter
of her amorous satisfaction reveals
himself. This is a magnificent portrayal,
rendering the Queen’s plight more moving
than Nina Warren’s Hamburg competence.
The time-serving courtiers are lightly
sketched, rather like Shakespeare’s
comparable functionaries in Timon
of Athens. Salzburg cast them from
strength, with Georg Zeppenfeld’s firm,
bronzed Philebos, wisest of the lot,
a stand-out.
Capriccio’s Hamburg
recording is clean and detailed, amazingly
free of stage and audience thumps, bumps,
and coughs, almost studio-bound. The
Andante Salzburg is much more a warts
and all radio job. The first two acts
were run together, with applause intruding
on the first notes of the onstage musical
entertainment which opens Act 2. As
a result Andante have to split the act
between discs, midway through the pivotal
scene between Kandaules and the newly-ennobled
Gyges, which is a pity. Of more moment,
however, is the restoration of numerous
snatches of spoken dialogue and two
very substantial spoken monologues over
music, amplifying Gyges’ background
and Kandaules’ discovery of the power
of the Invisibility Ring. All of this
adds about four minutes of music, of
little significance in itself but serving
to clarify plot and motivation. The
restoration might also help account
for the more human, less mythic ambience
of the Salzburg production over its
predecessor.
Which to choose? The
Capriccio documentation, featuring a
cogent essay by Beaumont himself, is
just as good if less flashily presented;
whilst their English-German libretto
is clearer to read than the three-language
Andante version, which (due to lack
of space?) pares down the stage directions,
sometimes to confusing effect. In an
ideal world you’d couple Pedersen’s
Hamburg Gyges with Stemme’s Salzburg
Queen. The choice for Kandaules is far
less clear cut. Maybe in the end Salzburg’s
fuller musical text and Nagano’s imaginative
direction tilt the balance just in favour
of the new Andante version; but anyone
who cares about Zemlinsky or twentieth
century opera really should take one
or the other into their library, for
it is one of those rare works which
offers fresh philosophical and musical
insights on each hearing. Der König
Kandaules may be, by definition,
a less finished masterwork than either
The Dwarf or Lyric Symphony;
but it is still a gripping opera, provocative,
outrageous and disturbing by turns.
Christopher Webber
DER KÖNIG KANDAULES
– COMPARATIVE DISCOGRAPHY
1. Vorspiel and Gyges Monologue Act
III. (Franz Grundheber (baritone),
Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg/Gerd
Albrecht) [coupled with Symphonische
Gesänge Op.20, Drei Ballettstücke
"Triumph der Zeit"]
CAPRICCIO 10 448 (1993)
2. Complete. Live, Hamburg State
Opera, 1996 (James O’Neal, Monte Pederson,
Nina Warren, Philharmonisches Staatsorchester
Hamburg/Gerd Albrecht)
CAPRICCIO 2-CD 60 071 2 (1996)
3. Vorspiel Act III. (Czech Philharmonic
Orchestra/Antony Beaumont)
CHANDOS CHAN 10204 (2003)
Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, Mozarteum
Orchester Salzburg (Bühnenmusik)/Kent Nagano
