Search - Dietrich Henschel, Gerald Haußler, Paul Hansen :: Humperdinck: Königskinder

No Libretto Provided, Disorganized Synopsis, Miscast Singers

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 08/24/2005

(3 out of 5 stars)

"I wanted so much to enjoy this recording of Humperdinck's 'other opera,' the one that we Americans know of primarily because it was premièred in 1910 at the Metropolitan Opera with Geraldine Farrar as the Goose Girl (and the same month as the Met's world première of Puccini's 'Girl of the Golden West' -- those were the days!), but alas this production did little to satisfy this curious listener. The present 3CD set on the Profil label derives from a 1996 Calig issue, although I'm not clear why the folks at Profil thought it was worth reissue, particularly since the Calig set is still available via the Internet and there does not appear to be a price reduction for this new set.



It is true that if one simply sits back and listens without paying too much attention to the story, the music is often quite nice, albeit a little long-winded. If you're familiar with Humperdinck's 'Hänsel und Gretel' you'll recognize the musical fingerprints of the composer, who quite astutely used Wagnerian procedures in the service of rather more light-hearted purposes than the Master of Bayreuth. Still, there are no tunes that reach out and grab you like several in 'Hänsel und Gretel' and its 2 1/2 hour length is hardly appropriate for its lightweight story. It is no surprise, really, that this opera dropped out of sight within a couple of decades of its première. Even in Germany it is rarely mounted.



As for the musical values of the performance itself, there are real problems. American tenor Thomas Moser sounds a bit tired and he strains rather often; as well, his heroic tenor seems wrong for the young and impetuous King's Son. Dagmar Schellenberger has a lovely mature soprano that sounds rather too matronly for the naïve and dreamy Goose Girl. Strangely, her grandmother, the Witch (Die Hexe), sung by mezzo Marilyn Schmiege, sounds young and even a little sexy. The only singers who really fit their roles and also sound wonderful are baritone Dietrich Henschel as The Fiddler (Der Spielmann) and bass Andreas Kohn as the Woodcutter (Der Holzhacker). It must be said that the orchestra and chorus, under Fabio Luisi, sound wonderful, and the minor solo characters are sung unexceptionably.



Profil's presentation is poor. There is no libretto (one gathers there was one, albeit only in German, in the Calig release) and the synopsis written by Kurt Malich (and translated into English execrably, as is her wont, by Susan Marie Praeder) is not only confusing, it's wrong in some particulars (at least when compared to the more sensible synopsis provided in the Viking Opera Guide).



My advice is to give this a miss unless you have, as I did, a strong curiosity about this Humperdinck work.



Scott Morrison"