Thuille's opera Gugeline

[Alan Howe]

Has anyone investigated this opera?>>
http://premiereopera.net/product/gugeline-by-thuille-hagen-1999/#!prettyPhoto/0/

[chill319]

No, but as his two previous operas were highly praised, this is most intriguing...

[BerlinExpat]

The recording is "in-house" from the 1999 production in Hagen but sadly the quality is not as good as the Marco Polo recordings of Schreker's Der ferne Klang and Siegfried Wagner's Bruder Lustig from the same theatre. The Hagen Gugeline was only the third ever staging, so the opera has not fared well. As is often the case, perhaps it's libretto that's at fault. Otto Julius Bierbaum's text is somewhat grotesque, but Thuille was obviously inspired for he provides imaginative music for which I feel the journey to Hagen was well worthwhile. Stylistically I find the music is partly more experimental than the few orchestral and chamber music pieces that I know. There are also some lovely romantic strains in the appropriate place I'm not convinced his style was influenced by anyone, but it may not be coincidental that Siegfried Wagner's Herzog Wildfang was written concurrently.
I have marginally improved the sound quality and added tracks, so if anyone would like a few sound bites to judge the music for themselves, I am willing to upload them.

[Alan Howe]

I finally decided to purchase the Premiere Opera (pirated) recording partly in order to compare the idiom with Hans Sommer's Rübezahl. There turn out to be clear similarities, although Sommer's opera is rather more obviously (and heavily) Wagnerian, whereas Thuille, while starting from the same template, seems to be heading in a more Straussian direction. (I say 'heading', because the idiom isn't really Straussian either.)

It would fascinating indeed to encounter a study of post-Wagnerian opera in the broad Austro-German tradition that took in, say, Sommer, Thuille, Reznicek, Draeseke, Schillings, Bungert, Schreker, Schmidt, d'Albert, Zemlinsky, S.Wagner, Pfitzner, Humperdinck, Kienzl, Klose, Weingartner, Schoenberg (Gurrelieder!) and whoever else I've forgotten. Of course, the great figure overshadowing such a study would be Richard Strauss, but I'd've thought that there's sufficient variety (and quality) among the operas of his rough contemporaries to make such a study worthwhile.