Gabriel von Wayditch (1888-1969) — help needed!

[Mark Thomas]

You're quite right, of course, Eric.

[Alan Howe]

I'm listening to The Caliph's Magician - and a rather exhausting listen it is too. I'm afraid this sort of thing falls in my operatic blind-spot; there's so little respite from the restless chromaticism and strenuous vocal writing. As I've said before elsewhere, I much prefer what the Italians were doing in this period. 

The thought of multiple hours of this sort of thing in an even more chromatic idiom fills me with absolute horror. I can't see von Wayditch making a come-back any day soon.

[Double-A]

Not to mention enduring it sitting in one of those bone breaker seats in an opera house. 

[Mark Thomas]

I'm a little more favourably disposed towards The Caliph's Magician than Alan is. He's right that there's no respite for the ears (or the singers), but it's a score full of orchestral colour, even if it is applied by the bucket load, and there's as much melody in it as Strauss put in Salome or Elektra, say. I found the companion piece, Wayditch's next opera Jesus before Herod, much heavier going. Despite being less than half the length, it seemed to go on for ever and the self-conscious "modernism" of the score was jarring, especially as it feels as if it's been bolted on later to keep up with the times rather than integral to the music - rather like some Prokofiev scores do. Once again, the ear is assaulted with volume, with only a minute or so's balm of a sweet "Alleluia" before it all crashes on to the end.

Alan's second paragraph has the vital point: if one tires of all this stridency after less than an hour, how on earth can Wayditch's later monster scores hope to endear themselves to audiences? 

[Alan Howe]

I think the idiom is actually post-Straussian. I can remember long stretches of both Salome and Elektra - but to my ears there's nothing comparable in The Caliph's Magician.