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.
Wagner’s score in its original form is pretty substantial - much
longer than the standard Italian
opera buffe or the French
opéras-comiques
which formed its ostensible model. The text is based on Shakespeare’s
Measure for Measure. Apart from
Rienzi it’s the
only occasion on which a Wagnerian opera is based on the work of another
author. The plot is substantially altered. The informative booklet note
speculates that Wagner intended the work as an allegory of the state
of Europe at the time under the despotic rule of the regimes that succeeded
the Napoleonic era, dominated in Germany by the arch-reactionary Austrian
chancellor Metternich. Wagner avoided censorship problems by shifting
the action from Shakespeare’s Vienna to Palermo. Although this
argument has the merit of linking the opera into the overall span of
the Wagnerian canon, it has to be said that the music itself - apart
from the occasional use of themes which Wagner re-employed in later
works - would not be generally recognisable as Wagnerian in style at
all. Instead it sounds, for much of the time, like a very good slice
of Rossinian froth. One must admire the manner and technique which the
young composer employs in his imitation of his Italian and French models.
Some of the extended finales and ensembles have a bubbling glee which
is both infectious and enjoyable, even if often Wagner’s enthusiasm
leads him to go on too long.
There are also hints here and there of the more mature composer: in
particular the duet between Frederick and Isabella where he tries to
seduce her harks back to Weber; there’s an almost literal note-for-note
quotation from
Der Freischütz. There’s even an allusion
to Beethoven’s
Fidelio - when she calls him “Abscheulicher!”
Much has been made of Wagner’s exploratory use of the
leitmotif
in
Das Liebesverbot, but only one such theme recurs regularly,
that of the “Ban on Love”. Indeed it comes round almost
too regularly during the closing scene of Act One. Even here one finds
Wagner adapting its harmonisation and scoring in a manner which presages
his much more innovative methods in the
Ring. During the later
stages of the opera Wagner moves away from his French and Italian models,
sounding much closer to the contemporary works of Marschner and Lortzing
- although
Das Liebesverbot predates many of the latter’s
major operatic scores. Like those composers Wagner also resorts unexpectedly
to passages of spoken dialogue in the Second Act - this to advance the
complications of the plot. Even more unexpectedly there are passages
of
secco recitative which Wagner indicates in the score can be
substituted by spoken dialogue, an option taken in this Oehms set. The
dialogue is well delivered - it even manages to elicit laughter from
the audience - and is only slightly abridged.
There have been a few recordings of
Das Liebesverbot over the
last fifty years, all taken from live or broadcast performances. Only
one of these has been truly complete, that conducted by Sir Edward Downes
for the BBC during the Wagner celebrations of 1976 to commemorate the
hundredth anniversary of the Bayreuth Festival. A recording conducted
by Wolfgang Sawallisch was made available on Orfeo, deriving from abridged
stage performances given in 1983 for the centenary of Wagner’s
death. Subsequently an earlier broadcast conducted by Robert Heger has
been issued on various labels but this is even more heavily cut. There
have been other recordings to be had at various times, but none are
currently available. This set appears to be the first recording made
during the digital era, again deriving from concert performances. Once
again the score is subjected to considerable abridgement. The scissors
have been applied with a will to many of the ensemble passages, cutting
not only repeated sections but also whole segments which are not to
be found elsewhere in the score. This is unfortunate in that the shape
of the ensembles is often considerably distorted, with passages hardly
having time to register before a modulation unexpectedly leads into
new material. Nearly forty pages of vocal score go missing at the end
of Act One. Even the overture, relatively familiar in its full form
from other recordings, is abridged here.
I have recently been accused by Malcolm Walker on the message board
of this site of being a “purist” about the matter of cuts,
when I objected to the unfortunately regular abridgement of the final
scene of
Lohengrin and suggested that recordings which made that
cut could not be regarded as a first choice for a collection. I rehearsed
at some lengths the dramatic and musical problems occasioned by the
cut in
Lohengrin in a
review
last year, and do not propose to rehearse the arguments again here.
If by “purist” it is intended to imply that I object in
principle to cuts in operatic recordings, I will plead guilty as charged.
As a composer myself I would wish my music to be listened to, and judged,
on the basis of the whole of the score as written. Although I might
be prepared to countenance abridgement in the context of a live or staged
performance - and have indeed done so - for a recording of the score
I would wish listeners to be given the opportunity to hear the music
in its entirety. If after that they decided to make their own omissions,
they could do so by use of the cuing facility on their players but that
option would be theirs. A recording which denies them that option cannot,
in my contention, be regarded as a first choice for the library shelf
unless there really is no other alternative.
Having said which, Wagner never during his later life had a chance to
re-stage or revise
Das Liebesverbot even if he had wished to.
I can well believe that he would have taken the opportunity if it had
presented itself to make some abridgement of the lengthy repetitions
of material in the score. It should perhaps be noted in this context
that Wagner himself admitted that he was a poor judge of how long his
early operas would last in performance. He was genuinely shocked that
the first staged performance of
Rienzi went on much later than
he anticipated. In his subsequent career his operas didn’t necessarily
get much shorter, but he was better at pacing himself. I don’t
think the cuts in any revival which Wagner had supervised would have
been as severe as those made in the concert performance under consideration
here. That said, the quality of singing, playing and recording are sufficient
in my mind to outweigh this consideration. The absolutely complete Downes
performance has only been intermittently available - although it has
recently re-emerged on the Ponto label and forms part of the DG Wagner
- Complete Operas (0289 479 0502 8 43) set. The sound of the Heger recording
which gives us a bit more of Act Two than the current issue is pretty
intolerable even for a German radio broadcast of the 1960s. The Sawallisch,
which I have never been able to hear, has some pretty impressive singers
on its roster but it only takes some four minutes longer over the score
than the current recording, which implies that the cuts are much the
same. According to the review of the Sawallisch issue in
Fanfare,
there were a couple of minor alterations made to the libretto to provide
‘in-jokes’ for the Munich audience; fortunately there are
none such here.
Sawallisch’s singers were recorded live on stage, with the inevitable
problems that one would expect might arise in such a complicated score
from minor errors in performance and balance. Here in a concert performance
we have a cast of singers who are generally accurate. I noticed a couple
of mis-pitchings of vocal lines in recitatives, which would not impinge
on a listener following without a score. Their placing on the platform
makes sure that the complex textures do not obscure any important lines.
In the Sawallisch set Hermann Prey took the most dramatically and musically
interesting part of the corrupt viceroy Frederick. Here Michael Nagy
sounds pretty good and ranges freely over the very wide vocal ambit
that Wagner has written for him. He even manages to
sound like
Prey in his big Act Two Aria. Elsewhere he has a more naturally appropriate
voice than the latter, who didn’t really have out-and-out villainy
in his good-natured armoury. Christiane Libor is fully Nagy’s
match as Isabella, but Charles Reid as her brother Claudio sounds slightly
over-parted in a role that really calls for something approaching a
full Wagnerian
heldentenor sound in the
Lohengrin mould.
Incidentally he also does something generally unheard of in a Wagner
score: decorating the final cadence (marked
ad lib by Wagner)
in his little arietta which launches Act Two. Libor too adds an unwritten
and effective top C to the final passage of the following duet. Peter
Bronder and Anna Gabler are fine as the secondary couple of principal
lovers, some very occasional sourness of sound apart. Mention should
also be made of Thorsten Grümbal as Frederick’s corrupt henchman
Brighella, who makes the trial scene which opens the second CD into
a real highlight. The rest of the predominantly young cast fit well
into their roles, and Sebastian Weigle gives the often sparkling orchestration
its full head in the excellent recorded balance. The chorus bring to
their heavily truncated passages plenty of enthusiasm, accuracy and
body. The enthusiastic applause from the audience at the end is well
deserved.
Apart from the intelligent and interesting essay on the work itself
to which I have referred, the booklet also commendably comes with a
complete text. No translation, alas, but singing translations into both
English and French can be found in the complete vocal score available
on
ISMLP
- although the listener will need to be prepared to turn batches of
pages very quickly to catch up with the abridgements. What would be
ideal would be an absolutely complete studio reading of
Das Liebesverbot
in modern sound and with star performers - hardly an absolute priority,
although in the Wagner centenary year it is I suppose a possibility.
Failing that, this set will do very well indeed for those who want a
recording of absolutely every opera that Wagner wrote. It may be enjoyable
for others too, such as those who like early romantic comic opera and
fancy a bit of a change from Rossini or Auber.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
Footnote
When reviewing this
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 subsequently broadcast
that same performance again, 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
