Here are delights. None of these pieces is often staged, and only alert record collectors will have caught up with some of them in the past. Most are for lovers of the kind of light-hearted opera that amused generations of German theatre-goers in the nineteenth century. Even the two ostensible outsiders contributed to the tradition. Rousseau’s Le devin du village, of 1752, was a Parisian classic of its day, with the composer-philosopher’s eye for a tale of rustic virtue surviving sophisticated temptation, and his ear for charming melodies proving wildly popular well beyond the borders of France. This is a 1956 recording, with the scoring for strings and continuo harpsichord still sounding clear, and with Nicolai Gedda, at just on 30, in his prime as Colin. Le cadi dupe, of 1761, helped to impel the fashion for Turkish subjects in Vienna, and retains its charm as well as the sense of drama vivid even in Gluck’s lighter enterprises. It is a little dully conducted here, but the performance is more than rescued by the sense of major singers enjoying themselves in an off-duty frame of mind, one which marks all these sets.
Weber’s Abu Hassan (1811) is a happy example of the fashion for exotic comedy. It overtakes most Singspiels of the preceding age by its speeding wit, its melodic elegance, its expressive orchestration, above all its ability to let the drama shape novel musical forms even within a short aria. The work has had an unsatisfactory recording history: this is as bright as a button, with Gedda a lightly amorous Hassan, Moser gloriously sending up the parodistic “Wird Philomene”, Moll bumbling about lustfully as Omar, and Sawallisch enjoying himself like anything with the orchestra. The recording does not catch all Weber’s witty orchestral detail, but never mind.
Too few composers learnt from Abu Hassan. Schubert’s repeated attempts at opera usually ended miserably. Der vierjahrige Posten (1815) draws chiefly on the Singspiels of Weigl, composer of some mildly tuneful Viennese successes who got it in the neck for his sentimentality in a withering review from E. T. A. Hoffmann. It is surprising that the piece has had more performances than any of Schubert’s operas apart from Die Verschworenen. Badly paced, tame in invention, here it receives dull conducting and a poor recording, all just about redeemed by Schreier and Fischer-Dieskau. Schubert never heard it on the stage, nor indeed – which helps to account for his lack of operatic success – did he see any of his operas except for Die Zwillingsbruder. This is much livelier, turning on a tale of a gentle twin and a furious twin (both of them here Fischer-Dieskau having a lot of fun). They confuse everyone until matters are cleared up and the young lovers can get married. It has the characteristic of all Schubert’s operas of settling down to pleasant lyrical numbers without regard to dramatic momentum. Even Lieschen’s charming aria, sung a little tensely by the otherwise reliable Donath, brings matters to something of a halt; but so excellent a cast, and Sawallisch’s sympathetic conducting, make it well worth hearing.
Die Verschworenen is the only one of Schubert’s opera to have had any real stage career. The text is a version of the Aristophanes Lysistrata plot, in which the women stop their men from going off fighting by a ploy described coyly in synopses but coming down to a stark ultimatum: War or Bed. No prizes for which wins. This is the opera in which Schubert most vividly keeps the action going, though even here he can falter with some beautiful but not very dramatic music. Moll and Moser are especially good, but the whole cast work well together, and Wallberg seems much happier than with Der vierjahrige Posten.
Mendelssohn, too, lacked experience of the theatre, though from an early age he was writing operas for performance in the home of his banker father. They can reflect domestic circumstances. His very first (apart from a sketch) includes a chorus of bank clerks, surely an operatic one-off; and the high spot of Die beiden Padagogen is a marvellous ensemble in which the two teachers argue about comparative methods (Mr Trad and Mr Trendy, we might now call them). Fuchs is a pretty Hannchen, and Fischer-Dieskau delivers himself with gruesome relish of an aria praising the use of the cane. The whole work is Mendelssohn at his brightest and wittiest; the better known Die Heimkehr aus der Fremde is more lyrical, with a beautiful Trio and Entr’acte and a fine aria for Schreier. Fischer-Dieskau is not at his most commanding with his entrance aria, but he contributes a hefty delivery of the old Nightwatchman’s song. Wallberg conducts both works well.
Alas, Mendelssohn never managed another opera despite all his protestations of enthusiasm (a late fragment, Die Loreley, is unimpressive). Lortzing was at the other extreme, a highly professional man of the theatre who in his last opera, Die Opernprobe of 1851, uses a Mozartian manner to mock the conventions. There is a neat rehearsal, and when the opera-mad Count insists on everyone conversing in recitative, the speaker of the part of Martin is made to try. He fails. As part of the romantic comedy also going on, Gedda makes the most of a beautiful Cavatina poised between parody and the real thing. Poor Lortzing: he died impoverished the day after the work’s successful premiere. There were not many good German comic operas of this kind to follow during the nineteenth century: one of the best was d’Albert’s entertaining little Die Abreise of 1898, a lively tale of a marriage cleverly repaired. Prey, Moser and Schreier easily outclass the recent version from Calig (6/97).
Deplorably, there are no texts accompanying any of these operas, though there are decent essays and synopses – in German. CPO continue their policy of not bothering to get literate translations, with many odd consequences. New light is shed upon Don Giovanni’s misdemeanours when we learn that the figure invited to his supper party is a “stoned guest”.'