11 Oct 2009
Johann Strauss: Das Spitzentuch der Königin
Dear non-German speaking Opera Today reader — what's your first guess as to the meaning of the biggest word in the title of this obscure Johann Strauss operetta?
Recently in Reviews
First Night of the BBC Proms : Elgar The Kingdom
The BBC Proms 2014 season began with Sir Edward Elgars The Kingdom (1903-6). It was a good start to the season,which commemorates the start of the First World War. From that perspective Sir Andrew Davis's The Kingdom moved me deeply.
Le nozze di Figaro, Munich
One is unlikely to come across a cast of Figaro principals much better than this today, and the virtues of this performance indeed proved to be primarily vocal.
James Gilchrist at Wigmore Hall
Assured elegance, care and thoughtfulness characterised tenor James Gilchrist’s performance of Schubert’s Schwanengesang at the Wigmore Hall, the cycles’ two poets framing a compelling interpretation of Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte.
Music for a While: Improvisations on Henry Purcell
‘Music for a while shall all your cares beguile.’ Dryden’s words have never seemed as apt as at the conclusion of this wonderful sequence of improvisations on Purcell’s songs and arias, interspersed with instrumental chaconnes and toccatas, by L’Arpeggiata.
Nabucco at Orange
The acoustic of the gigantic Théâtre Antique Romain at Orange cannot but astonish its nine thousand spectators, the nearly one hundred meter breadth of the its proscenium inspires awe. There was excited anticipation for this performance of Verdi’s first masterpiece.
Richard Strauss: Notturno
Richard Strauss may be most closely associated with the soprano voice but this recording of a selection of the composer’s lieder by baritone Thomas Hampson is a welcome reminder that the rapt lyricism of Strauss’s settings can be rendered with equal beauty and character by the low male voice.
Saint Louis: A Hit is a Hit is a Hit
Opera Theatre of Saint Louis has once again staked claim to being the summer festival “of choice” in the US, not least of all for having mounted another superlative world premiere.
La Flûte Enchantée (2e Acte)
at the Aix Festival
In past years the operas of the Aix Festival that took place in the Grand Théâtre de Provence began at 8 pm. The Magic Flute began at 7 pm, or would have had not the infamous intermittents (seasonal theatrical employees) demanded to speak to the audience.
Ariodante at the Aix Festival
High drama in Aix. Three scenarios in conflict — those of G.F. Handel, Richard Jones and the intermittents (disgruntled seasonal theatrical employees). Make that four — mother nature.
Lucy Crowe, Wigmore Hall
The programme declared that ‘music, water and night’ was the connecting thread running through this diverse collection of songs, performed by soprano Lucy Crowe and pianist Anna Tilbrook, but in fact there was little need to seek a unifying element for these eclectic works allowed Crowe to demonstrate her expressive range — and offered the audience the opportunity to hear some interesting rarities.
The Turn of the Screw, Holland Park
‘Only make the reader’s general vision of evil intense enough … and his own experience, his own imagination, his own sympathy … will supply him quite sufficiently with all the particulars.
Plenty of Va-Va-Vroom: La Fille du Regiment, Iford
It is not often that concept, mood, music and place coincide perfectly. On the first night of Opera della Luna’s La Fille du Regiment at Iford Opera in Wiltshire, England we arrived with doubts (rather large doubts it should be admitted)as to whether Donizetti’s “naive and vulgar” romp of militarism and proto-feminism, peopled with hordes of gun-toting soldiers and praying peasants, could hardly be contained, surely, inside Iford’s tiny cloister?
La finta giardiniera, Glyndebourne
‘Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,/ Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend/ More than cool reason ever comprehends.’
Sophie Karthäuser, Wigmore Hall
Belgian soprano Sophie Karthäuser has a rich range of vocal resources upon which to draw: she has power and also precision; her top is bright and glinting and it is complemented by a surprisingly full and rich lower register; she can charm with a flowing lyrical line, but is also willing to take musical risks to convey emotion and embody character.
Ariadne auf Naxos, Royal Opera
‘When two men like us set out to produce a “trifle”, it has to become a very serious trifle’, wrote Hofmannsthal to Strauss during the gestation of their opera about opera.
Leoš Janáček : The Cunning Little Vixen, Garsington Opera at Wormsley
Janáček started The Cunning Little Vixen on the cusp of old age in 1922 and there is something deeply elegiac about it.
La Traviata in Marseille
It took only a couple of years for Il trovatore and Rigoletto to make it from Italy to the Opéra de Marseille, but it took La traviata (Venice, 1853) sixteen years (Marseille, 1869).
Madama Butterfly in San Francisco
Gesamtkunstwerk, synthesis of fable, sound, shape and color in art, may have been made famous by Richard Wagner, and perhaps never more perfectly realized than just now by San Francisco Opera.
Luca Francesconi : Quartett, Linbury Studio Theatre, London
Luca Francesconi is well-respected in the avant garde. His music has been championed by the Arditti Quartett and features regularly in new music festivals. His opera Quartett has at last reached London after well-received performances in Milan and Amsterdam.
Puccini Manon Lescaut, Royal Opera House, London
Manon Lescaut at the Royal Opera House, London, brings out the humanity which lies beneath Puccini's music. The composer was drawn to what we'd now called "outsiders. In Manon Lescaut, Puccini describes his anti-heroine with unsentimental honesty. His lush harmonies describe the way she abandons herself to luxury, but he doesn't lose sight of the moral toughness at the heart of Abbé Prévost's story, Manon is sensual but, like her brother, fatally obssessed with material things. Only when she has lost everything else does she find true values through love..
OPERA TODAY ARCHIVES »
Reviews
Wrong! The “spitzentuch” of Das Spitzentuch der Königin turns out to be a lace handkerchief, which belongs to a queen. The plot synopsis relates a tale of dubious complexity, built around not only the spitzentuch but a truffle pastry that sabotages a honeymoon, as well as Miguel Cervantes in disguise as an innkeeper. Even with dialogue the two CDs in this CPO set don’t reach 95 minutes in length, and how all the story gets told in that time prompts more curiosity than the tale itself.
So CPO would have done just as well to cut the dialogue and produce a one-CD set of the music, because this is Strauss at his best — ridiculously tuneful and irresistibly toe-tapping. The booklet essays by Ernst Theis (who also conducts the Staatsoperette Dresden) and André Meyer, while stuffed with background detail, make unwarranted and extravagant claims. This is no “forgotten masterpiece.” If, as they both suggest, the libretto let the work down when it first premiered, it continues to do so. But the music! Strauss built one of his most famous pieces, “Roses from the South,” from the score, but there are many delights. Just program your player to omit the dialogue and get ready to kick up your heels.
Ernst Theis obviously loves this music, but he respects it as well — the performance dances, of course, but it also finds the sweetness in the occasional lyric moment. The cast come off as experienced operetta performers, if not the finest singers imaginable. Jessica Glatte sings the Königin of the title. By her booklet photograph she looks the part. The voice, however, tends to warble and lose color at the top. The König is a pants role, and mezzo Nadja Stefanoff gets one of Strauss’s great tunes, which she delivers with more enthusiasm than flair. Tenor Ralf Simon gets another instantly familiar tune in the romanze of Cervantes in act two. He does just well enough to make one wish one could hear a recording of Fritz Wunderlich in the same number.
Some less than ideal vocalizing, however, cannot seriously dampen the charm of the piece. Grab onto this Königin’s spitzentuch for a very pleasant hour — minus the dialogue.
Chris Mullins