Raff opera premieres

[adriano]

Calixo Bieito seems to have a serious personal problem with nudity; in his producions naked boys and men (generally more than women) alway have to appear. I think this has become, in the meantime, a rather cheap and worn-out tardemark for a stage director.

http://musicalsonline.com/calixto-bieito-naked-operas/
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2012/sep/03/calixto-bieito-shakespeare-mashup-forests
https://www.goodmantheatre.org/articles/a-journey-into-bieitoland/

[Alan Howe]

Oh, dear. I'll be avoiding him for sure. This is shock-jock territory.

[Mark Thomas]

This very positive review in Die Deutsche Bühne (in German) also offers some clues as to what director Bieito may have had in mind, most of which escaped me at the time, I'll admit. It seems to me that Raff's take on the Samson & Delilah story is sufficiently subtle, and in particular very different to Saint-Saëns' in it's treatment of Delilah, that there's enough for an audience to take in seeing Samson for the first time (as they all will be) without having also to decipher Bieito's views on a whole load of modern-day issues which are aired in any medium day in, day out.

[Alan Howe]

Yes, it's a very positive review.

I did wonder how Mark would react to this statement: 'Da wagnert ein Könner, was das Zeug hält!' Translated, the meaning is: 'An expert is 'wagnerising' (i.e. composing like Wagner) for all he's worth!' The critic mentions Lohengrin in terms of the choral writing, so I'm sort of wondering whether we'll find that this was as far as Raff went in being influenced by Wagner - i.e. this far and no further.

Any comments, Mark?

[Mark Thomas]

I'd have to listen to the recording to be sure, but my memory is that Samson does indeed come closer in places to being "Wagnerian" than anything else I've heard by Raff, but it's far from copying Wagner. It's quite consciously epic in scale and in places heroic in content, and I guess that the model for that style current in Weimar at the time was Wagner's newly-premiered Lohengrin. But Samson is much more lively, more varied in orchestral colour and more lyrical than Lohengrin, although I can see why a critic, hitherto ignorant of Raff, might think otherwise.

[Alan Howe]

a critic, hitherto ignorant of Raff

...and there lies our problem in a nutshell. It's all about the composer the critic already knows (Wagner) and making comparisons instead of taking Raff on his own terms.

[Mark Thomas]

As promised, our Downloads Board here now has a copy of Avrohom Leichtling's own digital realisation of his Overture to Raff's Samson, which was conceived as a replacement for the Prelude which Raff had intended for the work, but which he never actually committed to paper. It employs themes from the opera in their original orchestration and I must say, listening to it again having just heard the whole opera for the first time, what an excellent job Avrohom made of it. I am even more impressed now by its faithfulness to the atmosphere of Raff's original and its appropriateness as an introduction to the work. It would be wonderful if Swiss Fonogramm could be persuaded to add it to the planned recording next year, maybe as an appendix? I shall certainly be suggesting that they do.

[ewk]

Another very positive review, from one of Germany's leading newspapers (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung):

https://m.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/buehne-und-konzert/urauffuehrung-in-weimar-joachim-raffs-oper-samson-18316425.html

(in German)

[Mark Thomas]

Wow! That gladdens the heart. Thanks.

[Alan Howe]

This is the most interesting section of the FAZ review:

Äußerlich gibt sich ,,Samson" zwar als deutsche Version einer ,,Tragédie lyrique" mit Chören und Ballett in der Nachfolge von Meyerbeers Grand Opéra, doch die Partitur zielt unverkennbar auf die Verwirklichung eines durchkomponierten Musikdramas. Raff kam diesem Ideal sogar näher als Wagner selbst, zumindest in dessen bis dahin aufgeführten Bühnenwerken. Am ,,Lohengrin" hatte Raff in seinem Buch nicht nur kompositorische Mängel schonungslos analysiert, sondern auch fehlende Übereinstimmung mit Postulaten Wagners moniert, die dieser dann erst in seinem ,,Tristan" einlösen sollte.

Translation:

Although outwardly Samson purports to be a German version of a 'tragédie lyrique' with choruses and ballet as in a Meyebeer grand opera, the unmistakable aim of the score is the realisation of a through-composed music drama. Raff came closer to this ideal than Wagner himself, at least as regards the operas the latter had composed up to that point. As far as Lohengrin is concerned Raff in his book had not only pointed out compositional failings, and unsparingly at that, but had also complained that the opera didn't accord with Wagner's theories – theories which the latter wouldn't realise until later in Tristan und Isolde.

[tpaloj]

As promised, our Downloads Board here now has a copy of Avrohom Leichtling's own digital realisation of his Overture to Raff's Samson, which was conceived as a replacement for the Prelude which Raff had intended for the work, but which he never actually committed to paper.

Thank you Mark – not only this but all the positive and indepth commentary about past Sunday's premiere. I can only wish more reviews and analysis were available in English for the international audience as well. Maybe those will be forthcoming later.

I had no idea Raff meant to amend the opening for the planned 1865 performance. I must say I like Leichtling's treatment quite a lot, it's very faithful to Raff's style and obviously put together with great respect towards Raff and his music. My only issue is that I'd still prefer the opening to remain relatively short and sweet, given it was Raff's original instinct to write it that way. 10 minutes for this prelude is stretching it for me. But that's just my personal preference in this case.

For comparison here is Raff's original opening, reproduced from his manuscript (which I agree is more than a bit abrupt): Opening of Samson (Noteperformer). The sudden chords that Mark had mentioned strike at 0:35 in conjunction with the start of Oberpreisterin's part.

[Mark Thomas]

Thanks for the thanks, Tuomas, and thanks also for the digital realisation of Samson's opening. As regards Raff's intended Prelude for the aborted 1865 premiere, we don't know much about his intention, beyond the fact that it was to have been based on a march in Act I, which strikes me as a potentially difficult trick to pull off effectively given the downbeat and anxious atmosphere in which the opera proper starts. Still, Raff knew what he was doing, or maybe he changed his mind and then the prospect of a performance receded and he just gave up. We'll probably never know.

[adriano]

Yesterday I attended the first Zurich performance of "Die Eifersüchtigen".
I share Mark's opinion that this work is a rather unbalanced affair - and consider it a disappointment.
The performance was rather good, but the staging is amateurish, clumsy and silly. A conceptional and effective "Personenregie" was missing, making thus the work more boring that it already is. And centurie's-old cliché singer's gestures prevailed...
The problem of this opera is that Raff tried to write a Musikdrama with continuously flowing music, with an endless coming-up of nice tunes, but the result is a incessant meandering between two - or even more - operatic genres like comic "number" opera, symphonic melodrama and others.
The introductory notes of the program booklet affirm that the work is based on the lightweight Italian tradition of Rossini and Donizetti: what nonsense! This is a typically German thing. And Raff too, as practically all German composers of the 19th century, were unable to produce comic operas as the Italian did! Furthermore, compared to what happened in Germany at that time, Raff's "Die Eifersüchtigen" come up as a rather old-fashioned thing.
I think the composer should have first decided to what he really wanted and in my personal opinion, he should have written instead a Singspiel, with separate arias, accompagnato recitatives, duets and ensembles - simply bound together by spoken dialogues. In fact, the arias, duets and ensembles are very beautiful, but one forgets them because of all the music binding them together, and there is just too much of it, so that one gets drowned.
The short overture and the two short intermezzi are very nice, but nothing new in Raff's catalogue.
The work is definitely too long (2 hours and 45 minutes): already at the end of the first act I felt bored and missed a musical-dramatic impact - and guessed that there was nothing more exciting to come. Raff's own fussy libretto, written in rimes - would have been ideal for a Singspiel or an Operetta - or a typical "number" opera in the Italian style. Of course, one gets incessantly impressioned by the composer's usual orchestral skills and nice tunes, and there are many dramatic and "in-between" lyric moments which can be considered as jewels - but they just fly by and get lost.
Even though the work is conceived for a reduced orchestra of 36 players, it is heavily scored, needing singers with rather powerful voices.
In other words, I fear that Raff's "Die Eifersüchtigen" will not be performed frequently in the future - and not find its way into opera house repertoire. It's a curiosity for smaller private opera companies, like this Zurich "Opern-Kollektiv" - who, musically, did a good job. But I bet its 2023 production of "Viva la Mamma" will be a more appropriate and successful production.
Incidentally, its instrumental ensemble bears the bold name of "Orchestra of Europe"!

[Mark Thomas]

Thanks, Adriano, it's always good to hear from you and get an expert opinion. As you recognise, I too think that the work is flawed dramatically but maybe I was more positive about the overall experience and focused more on the quality of all the music because, unlike you, I am no "man of the theatre". I suspect you're right in saying that, unlike Samson, Die Eifersüchtigen doesn't have much of a future on the stage but it will be interesting to see whether listening to the promised recording, enabling us to concentrate on the music alone, will be a more rewarding experience - I hope and believe it will, because as you point out there are some real gems in the score.

[Alan Howe]

So: while Die Eifersüchtigen is probably for Raffians only, could Samson be for the world?