For Lachner fans who might wish to hear a rare performance of one of his operas. It will be interesting to compare with Donizetti's work. It would be equally interesting to compare his Benvenuto Cellini with Berlioz's though I suspect the latter would win the day.
Bavarian Radio Klassik on 14.10.2012 at 19:00
From the Prinzregententheater, Munich
Franz Lachner (1803 - 1890)
Catharina Cornaro
Opera in four acts
Catharina Cornaro Michaela Kaune
Andrea Cornaro Simon Pauly
Marco Venero Daniel Kirch
Jacob von Lusignan Mauro Peter
Onofrio Christian Tschelebiew
Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks
Münchner Rundfunkorchester
Conducted by Ulf Schirmer
I'm going to the actual performance, which is being broadcast live.
Will someone please record this for upload here, for those of us who love Lachner,and would love the chance to hear it? That would be so appreciated!
I'm hoping to be able to get hold of a quality recording but that will probably not be until some time after the broadcast itself.
Gosh, Mark, you very lucky fellow! Any chance of squeezing the entire cast, chorus and orchestra into your knapsack and smuggling them back here?
More seriously, surely Ulf Schirmer is a conductor frequently recorded by CPO? I wonder if......
I'm pretty sure I heard a broadcast of the opera sometime in the mid-1970s when BBC Radio 3 regularly broadcast operas on Sunday afternoons (those were the days! And when the opera was a BBC in-house production - as opposed to a tape from a European station - the BBC would willingly send you a copy of the libretto and a translation!). Anyone else remember that, or is my imagination playing tricks? Can't remember anything about it, but I was impressed and the name 'Catharina Cornaro' lodged itself in the memory.
Just a reminder: Will someone be able and generous to record Franz Lachners Catharina Cornaro tomorrow? Thank you, on behalf of all of us who enjoy him.
I should be getting a copy of the broadcaster's original recording, as distinct from their broadcast of it, but that won't be for some time I'm afraid.
Worth waiting for. Thanks!
I've just returned from a very surprising evening attending the concert performance of Lachner's Catarina Cornaro. It wasn't at all what I expected which, if I'm honest, was an amalgam of Weber and Marschner, with maybe some Bellinian bel canto thrown in. After all it was written in 1841 and for my money Lachner was a competent but not inspired composer (others disagree, I know).
I ate my humble pie in homage to him on the walk back to the hotel.
This was a full-blooded, lyrical and highly dramatic piece which looked forward to the middle of the 19th century, not back to its first quarter. The only overt influence seems to be Meyerbeer; the quartets and trios in the piece do remind one of Les Huguenots. But Lachner's lyricism has much longer legs than Meyerbeer's and, I was amazed to hear, his orchestration in this opera is not only as imaginative, it is more appropriate to the action. Lachner's instinct for the dramatic was obvious even in this concert performance and I'm sure that the work would go down very well in the theatre. The packed audience were clearly as absorbed as I was in this thoroughly committed and well-rehearsed performance which played the piece for all its considerable worth. Bearing in mind that both the conductor and the soprano were both last minute substitutes due to illness, it was a great achievement.
The concert programme confirms that cpo will be issuing the performance on CD and I recommend it wholeheartedly. I just hope that some of us are still around to enjoy it when it does eventually come out!
I enjoyed the thought of Mark tramping back to his hotel eating humble pie! "An amalgam of Weber and Marschner, with maybe some Bellinian bel canto thrown in." Eeeoooffff. Fortunately, a wise man is one who can readily change his mind.
A "full-blooded, lyrical and highly dramatic piece" was exactly what struck me when I listened to a Sunday pm BBC broadcast of the opera many (and many) years ago. That, alas, was the only occasion on which I've heard it. And sadly, I wasn't at all 'prepared' (i.e. doing some background reading or discovering the libretto and literary resources). I recall I was engaged in ironing some shirts in readiness for the week ahead and thought an opera - any old opera - might form a suitable 'background' to help fill the mind. Very quickly the iron was laid down and I gave my full attention to the opera, and at the same time cursing myself for allowing myself to be thrown blind into this unknown opera quite without signposts, hand-rails or whatever.
I'm most envious of Mark since I've been itching to hear the thing (properly this time) ever since. And if CPO are going to (eventually) issue the opera on CD, then celebrations will be had!
Interestingly I had a similar reaction to Mark about the forward-looking nature of the piece. I was surprised to discover it dated from 1841. In terms of construction, orchestration and what I could sense of drama and psychological treatment of characters it seemed a far later piece. (Much earlier I know, but prior to this broadcast my hunch, or rather prejudice, was that a Lachner opera might be rather like a Schubert one - the odd set piece where the sun bursts out from the clouds and one forcing oneself to at least admire what follows it. Dead wrong!)
I suppose Lachner (or rather all three of them), Hiller etc all form what Mr Hurwitz refers to as boring bunkum (or whatever the recent phase might have been). Poor man, to be unable to spot the merits of such music. I've wanted to hear much more of Lachner ever since. Just a glance at the worklist on Wikipedia shows there are around 200 published works (and from my point of view much interesting chamber music). Sadly just about all that is available on commercial CD are a few (perfectly decent but hardly top drawer) Marco Polo discs and - fully worth digging the hands deep into the pockets if you locate them - the Rodin Quartet recordings of the six quartets on 3 (individual) Amati discs. Have I missed out on anything else?
Let's hope this production of the opera, and then the CPO release, triggers off a revival of interest in Lachner.
I'm delighted, Peter, that my reaction matched your memory, although I didn't know that the work had been broadcast before, let alone by the BBC. If no one uploads a recording of last night's broadcast, I'll do so once I get a copy. It'll do until cpo issue it on CD.
Before hearing Catharina Cornaro, the best piece of Lachner's which I had heard is his String Quintet, a very fine piece of work. It is available to download from our Archived Downloads board here (http://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,1373.msg35836.html#msg35836), as are two overtures, one of which is to Catharina Cornaro and which gives, in retrospect, a reasonable impression of the opera itself.
For what it is worth, Mark, the BBC broadcast must have been circa 1976-78. I'm basing that, not on documented records, but on the vivid memory of a very large Edwardian villa at the rear of which there was a splendid (original) conservatory in which on sunny afternoons I set up the ironing board and listened to the regular Sunday afternoon BBC opera broadcast.
Late 1970s I reduced my heating bills by moving to a slightly smaller house, and although there is no causal connection, the BBC gave up complete opera broadcasts on Sunday afternoons. (And I also gave up ironing shirts).
All I can remember - apart from being mightily struck by the opera - was that the broadcast of Catarina Cornaro was from some European source, rather than an 'in-house' BBC production or one from ENO. It was the era when ENO did a series of Verdi operas in their original, pre-later-revision versions (Macbeth, Force of Destiny, Sicilian Vespers, Boccanegra etc) given by that splendid generation of singers at ENO such as Peter Glossop, Gwynne Howell, John Tomlinson, Robert Lloyd, Richard Van Allan, Derek Hammond-Stroud, Kenneth Collins and many others.
Ah, wonderful how nostalgia leads a chap way off-thread!
May I recommend Franz Lachner's exquisite Requiem, critically acclaimed as a masterpiece.. and with just cause!
Thanks, Mike.
Last night's live broadcast can be heard in full here: http://cdn-vod-ios.br.de/i/mir-live/MUJIuUOVBwQIb71S/iw11MXTPbXPS/_2rc_71S/_AES/9-bd5yZS/ef799eaa-b593-46f0-a2be-ba4d2aaf88d5_,1,2,.mp4.csmil/master.m3u8 (http://cdn-vod-ios.br.de/i/mir-live/MUJIuUOVBwQIb71S/iw11MXTPbXPS/_2rc_71S/_AES/9-bd5yZS/ef799eaa-b593-46f0-a2be-ba4d2aaf88d5_,1,2,.mp4.csmil/master.m3u8)
And thank you from me, Mike. I'm rather a Lachner neophyte (as it were), and your recommendation is appreciated. The Requiem duly ordered!
Methinks that without this invaluable site there would be a danger we'd all remain locked up in our own closets unaware of anything beyond our own particular preferences and prejudices!
Is anyone ever going to perform and record Lachner's Sixth Symphony (Schumann's favorite)?
You can hear a MIDI recording of it in the archived performances while waiting - on the basis of that stopgap, I can only say, I sure hope so, it sounds like a really good piece! (Though the scherzo seems "recorded" at a low level (besides being a quiet movement anyway, I suspect) when I play it on my iPod at least - you may want to go into iTunes or similar, go into get-info and turn the volume up for that movement after downloading :) )
I have mp3s of the opera broadcast and will upload them sometime later this week.
A good recording of the broadcast is now available in the Downloads board.
Quote from: Mark Thomas on Tuesday 23 October 2012, 07:32
A good recording of the broadcast is now available in the Downloads board.
Many thanks for this.
I've been curious about this work for some time, because of references to it in Wagner's writings and Cosima's Wagner's diary: a planned performance of
Rienzi in 1870 was pulled in favour of
Catharina Cornaro. Hearing Donizetti's version this morning prompted me to Google for Lachner's version, and it was with considerable frustration that I found that I'd just missed a web broadcast of it. So discovery of the downloads provided a happy ending, and I have experienced two Catharina Cornari in a single day. All I need now is Halévy's
La Reine de Chypre.
Donizetti's setting seems to me very run of-the-mill, and the announcer's puzzlement at its neglect seemed quite unnecessary. I was puzzled by its revival. Lachner's struck me as far more powerful and interesting, and reinforced my sense of anomaly: that rare opera buffs will go to any lengths to disinter not only minor Donizetti but even minor Pacini, but leave largely untouched the repertory of new German opera performed while Wagner was active as a composer. I know only a handful of such works.
That said, I don't agree that Lachner's opera sounds particular advanced for its time. The idiom seems to me the bog-standard lingua franca of early Romantic German opera, though without the harmonic mobility or melodic flexibility of Marschner or Spohr; more in the line of the serious Lortzing or Lindpaintner. Most of all, I was reminded of
Fierrabras and
Alphonso und Estrella by Lachner's friend Schubert.
I checked the Times Digital Archive for early British references to Lachner and found the following from 1836: 'we had a new symphony by Lachner, a composer of some genius, but who requires to be heard more before he can be understood'. So he had a brief spell as an avant-gardist before becoming the traditionalist despised, and ousted from his job, by Wagner. Coincidentally, while listening to the opera I read a letter from Ludwig II to Wagner, stating scornfully that Lachner had let the Munich theatre decline into an institution dedicated to trivialities and worthless amusements. Hard to believe, considering the earnestness of this score.
Wonder if that might have been the 4th symphony in E they were referring to, which an issue of AMZ mentions was conducted by Lachner around February 1836. The 5th I think wasn't premiered until several years later, I'm not sure when the 6th got its premiere - it could be one of the first three though... I really don't know their performance history (or anything about them except that I've heard one of them a few times and a few others once each.)
Very very very very belated response: have just found, at the Munich library, and mirrored @IMSLP a vocal score of this work which may be visible (if it passes copyright review- I assume and hope it will, as it was published in 1846) in a few days or so. So if you have the recording and can follow along, feel free.
here (http://imslp.org/wiki/Catharina_Cornaro,_Op.71_(Lachner,_Franz_Paul)), when ready.
...forthcoming from cpo:
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/franz-lachner-catharina-cornaro/hnum/3097613 (https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/franz-lachner-catharina-cornaro/hnum/3097613)
I was at the original performance broadcast live from Munich five and a half years ago (well, this is cpo) and can confirm that it is a strongly dramatic and lyrical piece, which on the night received a very lively and convincing performance - see the thread (http://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,3800.msg40977.html#msg40977) in which it was discussed. I'm afraid that my recording of the broadcast itself is no longer available, but I can thoroughly recommend the work.
And I think Mauro Peter will be doing very well! He has such a beautiful voice. Incidentally, I am living a couple of houses nearby but met him for the first time in Salzburg in 2012... And I am sure Maestro Weikert will be doing a great job as well. We know eachother since over 25 years, from the time he was principal conductor at the Zurich opera. He likes unsung repertoire very much. He recorded D'Albert's "Die Toten Augen" for cpo in 1999, and, in the same year, Rossini's "Tancredi" (with Marilyn Horne) for CBS.
My copy of the cpo recording arrived this morning. I can't say I'm that impressed: it's a German attempt at an Italian opera - so it has much better orchestration than most Italian operas of the period (good!), but little of the memorable melody so typical of that era (bad!). Oh, it's pleasantly lyrical and pleasing on the ear - but I fear I'm damning the opera with faint praise.
The singing is good-ish; Kristiane Kaiser as Catharina gives the stand-out performance, although one can imagine what a great singer such as Caballé might have done with the piece. Daniel Kirch (tenor) as Marco is OK: he has the range, but not the bel canto elegance or tone to give much pleasure. Mauro Peter (tenor) as King Jakob has a more attractive voice.
So, a nice momento of an entertaining evening at the opera; but no more than a middlingly good discovery overall and not a cast one would listen to for vocal pleasure. This is German bel canto, after all.
Wonder what Donizetti's version is like...?
...actually, we can find out here:
http://www.opera-rara.com/caterina-cornaro.html
Oh, joy unconfined!!