Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864)
Der Fischer und das Milchmädchen, oder Viel Lärm um einen Kuss (c. 1811) – overture and stage music*
Das Brandenburger Tor (1814) – prelude*
Wirt und Gast, oder Aus Scherz ernst (1812) – overture and Turkish march
Romilda e Constanza (1817) – overture
Giacomo Meyerbeer/Abbé Georg Joseph Vogler (1749-1814)
Der Admiral, oder Der verlorener Prozess (1811) – overture*
Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Pardubice/Dario Salvi
rec. 2021, House of Music Pardubice, Czech Republic
*First recordings
NAXOS 8.574316 [76]
The Scottish-Italian conductor Dario Salvi is an enthusiastic advocate of the music of Meyerbeer, with a particular focus on some of the lesser-known repertoire. A 2019 disc of his own arrangements of sacred works (Naxos 8.573907) was well received and, two years later, as noted in passing by my colleague Nick Fuller, he also recorded the composer’s first opera Jephtas Gelübde (“Jephta’s vow” – available only from Naxos Music Library, reference 9.70332). Now, on this new release, he has put together a generous collection of overtures and stage music dating from the very earliest stages of the composer’s career. The obscurity of these scores means that I have relied heavily on Robert Ignatius Letellier’s expert booklet notes for much of the factual information that follows and I readily and gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to him in that respect. Any opinions expressed are, of course, my own.
Three of the five works on this disc have never actually been recorded before. They are the brief overture to Der Admiral, oder Der verlorener Prozess (“The admiral, or The lost trial”) that is thought to have been written in collaboration with his teacher Abbé Georg Joseph Vogler; the even more concise orchestral prelude to Das Brandenburger Tor (“The Brandenburg Gate”), a one-Act Singspiel commemorating a Prussian victory in the Napoleonic wars; and the most substantial item on the disc, a 48 minutes long ballet of comically thwarted rustic romance entitled Der Fischer und das Milchmädchen, oder Viel Lärm um einen Kuss (“The fisherman and the milkmaid, or Much ado about a kiss”).
Even though the remaining two works on the disc have been previously recorded, both will, I suspect, be unfamiliar to most listeners. Firstly, we have a couple of excerpts from Meyerbeer’s second opera Wirt und Gast, oder Aus Scherz ernst (“Landlord and guest, or A serious joke”) which, in spite of the promise of its intriguingly oxymoronic secondary title, turns out to be simply a comic Singspiel with a score strongly influenced by the contemporary fad for pastiche “Turkish” orchestration. Finally there’s the overture to
Romilda e Constanza, a Rossinian opera semiseria that marked Meyerbeer’s first foray into opera in Italian – a career move that he marked symbolically by dropping the original German form of his name in favour of the Italianized variant Giacomo Meyerbeer.
Opening the disc, the overture to Der Admiral is, even if not terribly memorable, a tunefully attractive little trifle that effectively establishes a light-hearted, genial tone for this collection. Having successfully put smiles on our faces, it makes an effective prelude to the disc’s most substantial item, the ballet divertissement Der Fischer und das Milchmädchen.
As might, perhaps, have been anticipated, there is little in the way of originality in the 20 years old Meyerbeer’s highly danceable score which was, just like Der Admiral, composed under the supervision of one of his teachers – in this case Bernhard Anselm Weber. Indeed, in his usefully informative booklet essay, Robert Ignatius Letellier aptly describes its overture and the succeeding 21 individual tableaux as “heirs to the 18th century, hardly distinguished melodically and harmonically from the minuets and contredanses of Mozart and Beethoven”. In spite of the occasional music direction agitato or furioso, the general tone of Der Fischer und das Milchmädchen is essentially as good-natured as you might expect from a tale of lightly comic romantic entanglements in a bucolic setting. While the ballet’s detailed scenario has been lost, we do know that, in broad terms, tableaux 1-7 depicted laundresses and hunters, 8-14 brought a vivacious milkmaid and a flirtatious fisherman into the story, 15-18 added the fisherman’s wife - a feisty no-nonsense innkeeper - to the mix, while 19-21 wrapped things up with a general and genial reconciliation of all the characters. While the bare bones of the rather slight and inconsequential story are pretty obvious, the absence of any more precise details does pose a real problem for us listeners by making it impossible for us to deploy our imagination to “see” any on-stage action. Neither can it be denied that, while individually quite charming, an average duration of a little more than two minutes each means that many of the tableaux struggle to make much in the way of a real dramatic impression.
A few more substantial numbers do, nevertheless, serve to demonstrate the young composer’s undoubted skill. After a winning Ouvertüre that successfully establishes the pastoral atmosphere and also introduces the hunting horns that will reappear repeatedly throughout the score, Tableau 2: Air de chasse reinforces those hunting motifs in an effective manner. The horns appear once again in Tableau 6: Air de chassé par Écho, a lively dance that builds to a convincing climax that certainly puts a real dancer into the mind’s eye, even if, in the absence of a theatrical plot, one really can’t be certain why she is dancing at all. Tableaux 9a and 14 are undeniably well-crafted and enjoyable pas de deux, even if they somewhat unimaginatively bring those horns back yet again, while Tableau 10: Allemande is a lively, propulsive number that goes with a real swing. Tableau 18: Corps de ballet is followed by the final reconciliatory sequence comprised of Tableau 19: Pas seul, a rhythmically lively Tableau 20: Pas de trois and a concluding celebratory Tableau 21: Finale, ou Contredanse générale. Taken together, they make a really effective conclusion to the whole piece. Incidentally, that final contredanse increasingly brought to my mind the celebratory dance for the whole company that brings Frederick Ashton’s ballet La fille mal gardée to a close. If you think that that’s a rather bizarre connection, I can only observe that the composer Ferdinand Hérold, whose music was rearranged for La fille, was born in exactly the same year as Meyerbeer himself.
Der Brandenburger Tor was written to mark a great Prussian military triumph over the Emperor Napoleon. Nevertheless, Mayerbeer subverts our expectations by counterintuitively focusing not on martial themes but on the subsequent return to the world of peace and love. The brief yet attractive prelude exhibits a winning, pastoral tone that certainly makes one want to hear more – which, in fact, nobody had actually been able to do until 1991 when the world premiere was finally staged in Berlin.
The overture to Wirt und Gast, oder Aus Scherz ernst is just a few seconds short of twice as long as the Brandenburger Tor prelude and, though just as episodic as most overtures of the time, is a real treat to encounter for the first time. The story is an early and Middle Eastern variant of the familiar Si j’étais roi / Prince and the pauper scenario, with a poor man’s brief occupation of the throne promising him golden opportunities yet delivering mainly dire complications. Both the overture and Act 2’s Turkish march are, as Mr Letellier neatly observes, “alive with Oriental exoticism, in the clashing percussion… of triangle, cymbals and bass drum… while also capturing the chromatic unease that reflects the deception of the storyline”. Percussion aficionados may regret that Meyerbeer didn’t go the whole hog and throw a stirring jingling johnny into the mix, but, all the same, these are certainly attractive pieces of music. The Naxos booklet essay tells us that Wirt und Gast’s first modern revival took place at the Bad Urach Festival in 2010. There’s a full sound-only recording on YouTube - and it certainly has a live audience present - but no details are offered of whether it’s of that particular production.
The final piece on this release, the 1817 overture to Romilda e Constanza, takes us into an altogether different – and arguably more serious - musical world. The precise character of that world can, however, be somewhat contentious. In his aforementioned review of the complete opera, my colleague Mike Parr considered that while Romilda e Constanza “shows how completely Meyerbeer had absorbed the early nineteenth century Italian style of composition... most importantly, he does not attempt to imitate the Rossini style that was reigning supreme at that period” [my own emphasis]. On the other hand, Naxos essayist Robert Ignatius Letellier suggests that the musical techniques that the composer deploys on this disc’s final track are “all fingerprints of the typical Rossini overture”. To be fair, those divergent opinions may derive from the fact that Mike was taking an overview of the score of the complete opera while Robert’s focus was solely on its overture. Nevertheless, the fact that it is possible for two expertly informed listeners to come up with such contrasting views surely confirms that the score of Romilda e Constanza is a much more sophisticated, multi-faceted and, therefore, intriguing piece of work than Meyerbeer’s earlier works as presented on this disc.
I have had cause to praise the players of the Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Pardubice on this website before and reference to the MusicWeb search engine quickly demonstrates that other colleagues have also been impressed. While Rob Barnett thought the orchestra’s performances of Wranitzky “alert and downily buoyant”, Marc Rochester characterised its contribution to a disc of Koželuch’s symphonies as “highly distinguished” and Nigel Harris judged that the players brought “precision, verve and no little virtuosity” to a disc of opera overtures by Haydn. On this occasion their skilled sensitivity to the demands of the music is again well to the fore and they give us completely idiomatic accounts that are characterised, as appropriate, by delicacy or finely controlled energy. Several passages, especially in the earliest works, offer considerable opportunities for solo woodwind players and, whether from the flautist, oboist or clarinettist, those are invariably finely delivered. To employ a well-worn but nonetheless very useful cliché, all 34 musicians perform as real chamber players who are constantly listening intently to each other – as well as taking their musical lead from their conductor. Dario Salvi is, of course, something of a specialist explorer of the lesser-known byways of music composed in the second and third quarters of the 19th century and, by skilful control of orchestral colour, orchestral balance and dynamics he creates performances that could hardly, I think, be more idiomatic.
I am also pleased to add that the sound achieved by the Naxos engineering team in the House of Music in Pardubice is clear and precise. Originally built in 1983 as a base for the local communist Party bureaucracy (and, from the outside, most definitely looking the part!), since 2004 it has boasted a striking and attractive modern concert auditorium. In the 149 reviews that you will currently find on Google, both performers and audience members repeatedly and rightly praise it for its fine acoustic qualities and those are well demonstrated on this new disc. Incidentally, MusicWeb readers who, like me, are of a certain age, will no doubt also appreciate poster D.J. Sweder’s welcome assurance that the House of Music also boasts “clean sanitary facilities”.
I must make one final special mention of Robert Ignatius Letellier’s booklet essay. Mr Letellier is not just a well-known musicologist but, specifically, the author of An introduction to the dramatic works of Giacomo Meyerbeer (London, 2016) and Giacomo Meyerbeer: a critical life and iconography (Newcastle, 2021). He writes with both insight and clarity and thereby adds considerable extra value to a release that is not only of considerable interest in its own right but valuable in filling several gaps in the recorded music catalogue.
I might normally have also remarked positively on the simple yet effective design of the disc’s front cover. I will refrain from doing so on this occasion, however, as the image in question, cleverly refashioned from a couple of attractively naïve period lithographs, has been created by Dario Salvi himself. And I don’t want too much praise to go to his head.
Rob Maynard
Published: November 22, 2022
