Engel: Grete Minde

[Alan Howe]

It does indeed. Pity about the singing - sounds sub-par to me, which is a huge shame. Provincial German opera houses almost always have excellent orchestras, but their problem is casting.

[DK]

Theater Magdeburg also offers a video of young singers performing some of Engel's Lieder:
https://www.theater-magdeburg.de/spielplan/online/onlineformate/wo-die-liebe-endet-fangen-lieder-an/

[Alan Howe]

Not quite the same thing as singing opera, especially heavily orchestrated late-romantic stuff. It's a widespread problem, of course - even the top opera houses have trouble casting good singers in this repertoire. Very frustrating.

[mikehopf]

Strangely, no comments about the opera itself.

Personally, I loved it!

[Alan Howe]

It's a personal thing. I find it hard to listen to poorly sung opera - so, for example, I just won't collect obscure Donizetti operas if they're done by provincial Italian opera houses with sub-standard singers. For me, it takes away all the enjoyment in the same way as a poor soloist in a concerto would. And, as I've said, it's particularly difficult these days to cast the German repertoire properly, i.e. Wagner and his successors.

[mikehopf]

It's a chicken and egg situation. You don't judge the quality of the egg by the character of the chicken that produced it.

Thus, many operatic masterpieces failed at their first performances because of the inadequacy of the production e.g. La Traviata; Barber of Seville et al.

[Alan Howe]

No, but the enjoyment of opera has to do with the quality of singing. I'm with critic Ralph Moore over at MusicWeb: his first consideration when judging opera recordings is the singers involved. So, for me, to listen even to an interesting unfamilar opera such as Grete Minde while having to suffer frayed tone, wobbles, screeches, etc. is a put-off from the word go.

I'm not judging the work itself - just expecting decent singing. It's no different from expecting decent orchestral playing in a symphony or a decent soloist in a concerto.

[mikehopf]

How do other members react to this opera?

[britishcomposer]

I was pleasantly surprised. I didn't expect a masterpiece but had to concede that Engel managed to handle the big forces quite assuredly. They told us Engel began work around 1914 and finished the opera in 1932. I wouldn't claim that he developed a distinct voice of his own but he definitely wrote in the language of his time. Wagner laid the foundations. The score is largely throughcomposed and Engel uses the vocal lines in an expressive manner. Harmonically he remains grounded in late romantic tonality but sometimes stresses the boundaries in a Straussian expressionistic way. But I also hear more folk-like, popular elements and simpler melodic lines, esp. in the last act. Perhaps more Humperdinck than Strauss here.
These are my first subjective impressions so dont judge me too harshly.

[Alan Howe]

Sounds about right to me - thanks.

[semloh]

Just as a follow-up to this thread, I see that the July issue of Gramophone reviews the recent Orfeo 2-CD recording of the February 2022 performance. Interestingly in view of the comments above, it says that

This is likely to remain the work's only recording, and happily the Magdeburg forces, persuasively conducted by Anna Skryleva, do it proud. It's a fine achievement from an ensemble cast, with Raffaela Lintl's Grete a vivid, believable creation, and Zoltán Nyári an attractively sung Valtin. Kristi Anna Isene and Marko Pantelic´ are suitably unflinching as Trud and her husband, Gerdt. Among the other singers, Karina Repova stands out for her powerful and affecting Mother Superior.

[Ebubu]

The Orfeo album is now on Youtube, just like so many albums from the major recording companies.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nHQsR10gad4QIR091hMZwiKf5avThoA6w