THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Wednesday, July 31, 2019 |A
FROM TOP: PETER AARON; AKG-IMAGESBYBARRYMORELAURENCESCHERER
Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.
EACH SUMMER,as part of its
one-composer focus, Bard Sum-
merscape exhumes an opera from
the repertory graveyard. The Aus-
trian-born Erich Wolfgang Korn-
gold (1897-1957), the subject of
this year’s examination, is best
known in the U.S. for his movie
scores, whose symphonic lyricism
swept Hollywood (he resettled
there in the 1930s, after the Nazis
invaded Austria), and for his
crowd-pleasing Violin Concerto,
given its premiere by Jascha Hei-
fetz in 1947.
Korngold was a major star in
Europe before he scored films like
“The Adventures of Robin Hood.”
A child prodigy, he attracted at-
tention with a ballet at age 11, and
his opera “Die tote Stadt” (1920)
was an enormous hit, receiving
multiple productions after its pre-
miere in Germany. Bard will pres-
ent “Die tote Stadt” in concert on
Aug. 18, but its fully staged opera
production, which opened on Fri-
day, is the truly obscure “Das
Wunder der Heliane” (“The Mira-
cle of Heliane,” 1927).
With its weird, mystical story,
“Heliane” was out of step with
Weimar-era operatic fashion, since
audiences were more interested in
pieces with contemporary themes.
The Bard production, directed by
Christian Räth, tried to play down
the opera’s heavy-handed, fairy-
tale symbolism and religious aura
in favor of the emotional journey
of the heroine, with some success.
However, “Heliane” still seemed
less a buried treasure than an in-
triguing curiosity, worth hearing
for its massive, Technicolor or-
chestration and the way that
Korngold’s distinctive idiom re-
calls not just Strauss and Wagner,
but also the clangorous fortissi-
mos of Bartók and the rhapsodic
lines of Puccini.
Hans Müller-Einigen’s libretto is
based on a play by Hans Kaltneker.
Heliane, the only character with a
name, is married to the despotic
Ruler of an unhappy country. The
Ruler has arrested and condemned
An Obscure Story of Love, Sexand Death
OPERA REVIEW
to death the charismatic Stranger,
who has tried to bring joy to the
country’s downtrodden people.
Heliane secretly visits the
Stranger in prison, and to comfort
him on the eve of his execution,
she shows him her naked body.
Her jealous husband, who has
never himself gotten past what he
calls her “icy innocence,” has her
put on trial for adultery (the pen-
alty is death). When the Stranger
kills himself to protect her, she is
ordered to prove her purity by
raising him from the dead, which,
indirectly, she does. The overarch-
ing theme is the power of love—
the act of accepting her own
erotic nature allows Heliane to
finish the Stranger’s work and free
the people. Unsurprisingly, she has
to die for this to happen.
Led by Leon Botstein, the 80-member orchestra—complete with
triple and quadruple winds, extra
brass, two harps and multiple key-
boards, including organ, harmo-
nium and celesta—excelled in big
statements. Other than the volup-
tuous eroticism of the encounter
between the Stranger and Heliane,
Act I was mostly muscular and
noisy. However, the court scene of
Act II had the dramatic urgency of
Puccini. By Act III, the mystical
trial, we were well into the realm
of Wagnerian apotheosis, with ec-
static melodies enveloped in opu-
lent harmonies.
The massed forces require pow-
erful singers, and soprano Aušrine
Stundyte was consistently impres-
sive as Heliane, able to soar over
the orchestra yet still maintain an
affecting vulnerability, especially
in the purity trial, when shesounded like a woman who
wanted her lover back. Bass-bari-
tone Alfred Walker clearly con-
veyed the vicious cruelty of the
Ruler with his clipped, aggressive
delivery. The Stranger is a chal-
lenging Heldentenor part, and
Daniel Brenna acquitted himself
with clarion distinction in the first
two acts, but sounded weary after
his resurrection in the third. As
the Messenger, who is also the
Ruler’s ex-lover, mezzo Jennifer
Feinstein infused her performance
with bile; tenor Joseph Demarest
had a sweetly lyrical cameo mo-
ment as the Young Man, who
speaks in defense of Heliane. The
capable chorus captured the fickle
nature of the crowd.
Designer Esther Bialas created
an ingenious, if gloomy-looking,
Rubik’s cube of a set—severaltranslucent panels, with stairs be-
hind them, that were rearranged
throughout to create the various
locations. The best was the court-
room, where the six bald judges,
in red robes with flowing sleeves
and giant ruffs, arrayed them-
selves forbiddingly on steep
bleachers. Ms. Bialis also came up
with a good solution for Heliane’s
nakedness: a gauzy, semi-transpar-
ent garment that revealed just
enough to make the point. How-
ever, neither the Stranger’s unflat-
tering orange prison jumpsuit nor
his resurrection outfit, which
looked like plastic wrap, helped
reinforce the character’s seductive
appeal. Thomas C. Hase’s lighting
also took the story’s dark environ-
ment a bit too literally: In Act I, it
was sometimes difficult to see
what was going on.
Mr. Räth’s directing emphasized
the story’s human aspects—the
Ruler’s festering anger at his wife,
Heliane’s gradual awakening as
she discovers that she actually
loves the Stranger, and how the
power of the state is arrayed
against her. Catherine Galasso’s
movement direction added tex-
ture, contrasting the rigid exer-
cises of the guards with a flowing
dream sequence during the radi-
ant Act III prelude: A bevy of
women, costumed, like Heliane, in
the nakedness garment, danced
with her, demonstrating the awak-
ening of her true feelings. (They
then put her into a straitjacket for
the purity trial to come.) The
transcendent music at the end of
the opera suggests some kind of
supernatural union of the two de-
ceased lovers, but Mr. Räth left
the dead Heliane alone on the
stage at curtain, her “miracle”
having cost her everything. So
much for fairy tales.Ms. Waleson writes on opera for
the Journal and is the author of
“Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The
Death of the New York City Opera
and the Future of Opera in
America” (Metropolitan).CULTURAL COMMENTARY
A Hollywood Composer Gets ‘Serious’
The Bard Music Festival focuses on Erich Wolfgang Korngold, whose art music long went overlooked
Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.
NOW THAT FILMmusic enjoys
an unequivocal presence on con-
temporary orchestral programs,
it’s no surprise that the Bard Mu-
sic Festival, that bastion of imagi-
native programming, is marking
its 30th anniversary season by
turning to a figure somewhat un-
familiar as a “serious” composer:
Erich Wolfgang Korngold
(1897-1957). Korngold was argu-
ably the pre-eminent film com-
poser during Hollywood’s “Golden
Age.” Yet, by the time he died, his
work there during the 1930s and
’40s had effectively obliterated
the exceptional stature he had
achieved in Europe’s concert halls
and opera houses.
The son of a powerful Viennese
music critic, he was a child prod-
igy whose early compositions as-
tounded leading figures of the
time. In 1906, at age 9, he played
his cantata “Gold” for Gustav
Mahler, who pronounced him a ge-
nius. When Korngold was 14 his
his Piano Sonata in E Major was
championed throughout Europe by
the great pianist Artur Schnabel,
and he dedicated his “Schauspiel-
Ouvertüre” (1911) to the eminent
conductor Arthur Nikisch, who
conducted its premiere that year
in Leipzig.
Korngold found his personal id-
iom from the start, one rooted in
the richly melodic late-Romantic
language of the newborn century.
It was the post-Wagnerian vernac-
ular employed by Mahler, Richard
Strauss and Rachmaninoff. And
Korngold never felt the desire to
alter what came naturally to him,
especially as it so successfully an-
swered his dramatic needs.
His operas earned critical and
popular acclaim, climaxing with
“Die tote Stadt” (“The Dead
City”) in 1920 and “Das Wunder
der Heliane” (“The Miracle of He-
liane”) in 1927. During that pe-
riod, Korngold also collaborated
on several theatrical projects
with the leading Viennese stage
director Max Reinhardt, who
brought him to Hollywood in 1934
to adapt Mendelssohn’s incidental
music to “A Midsummer Night’s
Dream” for Reinhardt’s epochal
film of Shakespeare’s play. The
success of this pioneering effort
by Warner Bros. to popularize
Shakespeare led to Korngold’s
employment at the studio.
Starting with “Captain Blood”
(1935), Korngold contributed
mightily to perfecting the sym-
phonic film score as an art form.
With his considerable theatrical
experience, he approached film
music no differently than opera
and symphonic music. Having es-
sentially invented what became
identified as the lush “Hollywood
sound” decades before arriving
there, he simply transferred his
accustomed idiom to the new me-
certs, like Beethoven’s “Egmont”
music or Grieg’s “Peer Gynt” suite.
Nevertheless, while it was
Korngold’s good fortune to arrive
in Hollywood when he did, that
he concentrated on film at a time
when music critics accorded no
serious consideration to such
“commercial” work proved to be
his tragedy. Indeed, by establish-
ing himself in Hollywood, Korn-
gold unwittingly struck a Faust-
ian bargain that only later
became evident.
Nazi Germany’s annexation of
Austria in 1938 cut short the
transatlantic career he had been
pursuing between the world wars
and cost the Jewish Korngold his
personal and professional ties
with Vienna—as well as his home
and property there. Following the
war’s end, and after writing one
of his last film scores—“Decep-
tion” (1946), from which he fash-
ioned his Cello Concerto—he fo-
cused on composing
straightforward concert works,
including his Symphony in F-sharp (1947-52).
Naïvely hoping to resume his
old life, he traveled back to Vi-
enna in 1949, only to be crushed
by dismissal of his music as
ephemeral and out of touch with
contemporary trends. Embittered
and ill, yet faithful to his musical
ideals, he died at 60 believing
himself forgotten. And he was, un-
til the 1970s, when revived inter-
est in his film scores began to
spread to his symphonic and
chamber works.
Through performances, pre-con-
cert talks and panel discussions,
the Bard Festival will investigate
the Korngold question by offering
a comprehensive sampling of his
music, including his early “Much
Ado About Nothing” Suite
(1918-19); the Piano Concerto in C-
sharp, for the left hand (1923); the
Piano Quintet in E (1921–22); the
Symphony in F-sharp and “A Pass-
over Psalm” (1941); excerpts from
iconic film scores; as well as a
special screening of “The Constant
Nymph,” and a semi-staged pro-duction of his best-known opera,
“Die tote Stadt.” Korngold’s work
will be presented in the context of
music by predecessors, contempo-
raries and successors ranging
from Alexander von Zemlinsky,
Franz Schmidt, Ernst Krenek and
Paul Hindemith to such Broadway
doyens as Jerome Kern and
George Gershwin.
“The festival will try to show
that the 20th century wasn’t only
about Schoenberg, Bartók, Stra-
vinsky, but about a continuous al-
legiance to tonality,” notes Leon
Botstein, Bard Music Festival co-
director. “Like Shostakovich,
Strauss and Rachmaninoff, Korn-
gold remained faithful to the tra-
ditions. Yet his music raises the
unsettled debate over what mean-
ing aesthetic beauty has in a
world full of ugliness—must you
break with the past or can you re-
construct your ties with it, as
Korngold did?”Mr. Scherer writes about music
and the fine arts for the Journal.A scene from Bard Summerscape’s
production of ‘Das Wunder der Heliane’BYHEIDIWALESON
dium. He regarded his film scores
as operas without singing—with
Wagnerian-style leitmotifs for
characters and a richly orches-
trated symphonic continuity that
moved the drama along while sub-
tly underscoring its shifting emo-
tions. Korngold intended them
eventually to be played at con-Erich Wolfgang Korngold in 1916STEPHANIE BERGERThe Richard B. Fisher Center for the
Performing Arts at Bard CollegeLIFE & ARTS