I will confess that I have had an affection for Lehár’s
Giuditta, ever since I heard a 1959 album of its highlights
(Decca London 400 900-2) with Hilde Gueden and Waldemar Kmentt. Giuditta
was Lehár’s last production and, in my estimation, a
masterpiece. Yet it seems to be so little regarded today. As far as
I can ascertain there is only one DVD (Mörbisch Festival production)
and I hear of so few stage productions. Why? - especially when experts
agree that it approaches the realms of opera more than any other of
Lehár’s operettas, with its scintillating, beautifully
crafted music, requiring a larger orchestra, and its melodramatic
story that is not unlike Bizet’s Carmen. The fact that
Giuditta’s première was given at the Vienna State
Opera, starring Jarmila
Novotná and Richard
Tauber in the leading roles, underlines this impression.
Add to this the fact that earlier Lehár operettas had been
pointing this way - those with a tragic seam and unhappy endings such
as: Der Zarewitsch, Das Land des Lächelns
and Frederike. It seems even more puzzling when its hit number,
‘Meine Lippen, sie küssen so heiss’ (My lips kiss
with such passion) is known so well and performed reasonably frequently
on stage (and at the Proms!). That song can be seen in numerous versions
on YouTube, including Anna
Netrebko's.
So why did Giuditta not catch on? After all it featured a number
of attractive tunes? Maybe it was out of joint with the times? 1934
saw increasing unrest in Europe with the rise of the Nazis. This might
have influenced Austrian opinion with the Anschluss only four years
into the future. Moreover tonal music was giving way to the atonal.
Probably Giuditta puzzled audiences who didn’t know whether
to appreciate it as opera or operetta. My own opinion, for what it’s
worth, adds another reason and that is that the downbeat ending taken
over the last two scenes could demoralise an audience, rubbing in
Octavio’s heartbreak too much; surely the two scenes might have
been better combined?
As an aside but pertinent I feel, there is an interesting similarity
between Giuditta and Puccini’s La Rondine. The
latter had been conceived as an operetta rather than an opera but,
in the end, it didn’t seem to slot into either category. On
acount of this idiosyncrasy it languished unloved and little performed
even though its music was so appealing. Fortunately superstars Angela
Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna championed it, recording it for EMI Classics
in 1997; it won Gramophone's top award as their
'Recording of the Year'). They also starred together in the 2002 Royal
Opera House performance. When I wrote an appreciation and comparative
reviews of audio recordings of La
Rondine back in the year 2000, I bemoaned the lack of recordings,
performances and DVDs at that time. The situation has changed quite
dramatically since then. Maybe the time has come for a similar rescue
effort for Giuditta?
Briefly, the story concerns carefree soldier Octavio; carefree that
is until he meets the sultry Giuditta who is married to the boring
Manuele. Love and passion are sparked; Octavio is enslaved and the
couple run off together from the southern Mediterranean seaport to
a garrison town in North Africa. Here they are parted when duty calls.
Giuditta tries, in vain, to stop her lover leaving. She says she is
accursed as is every man who loves her. The next scene is in the Alcazar
Night Club in a North African City where Giuditta is the star singer.
She attracts the attentions of Lord Barrymore and goes off with him
just as Octavio - now a deserter - sees them go. Octavio is heart-broken.
He sinks into degradation and in the last scene, four years later,
he is reduced to playing piano in a hotel bar. Giuditta, now Barrymore’s
mistress, sees him. She declares that she still loves him but it is
too late; Octavio is too broken to respond.
With this recording, as usual we have a pitifully incomplete booklet,
in German and English, with no plot synopsis. What we do have though
is an erudite essay on Giuditta by Ingo Dorfmüller. He
mentions that Lehár’s mature works, and especially Giuditta,
had been inspired by the shimmering harmonies and elaborate instrumentation
of Puccini, Strauss, Korngold and Schreker. This is very clear in
the opening orchestral prelude which has the very essence of North
African allure. Tragic overtones signify at once that this is not
going to be a happy story; although, the customary operetta supporting
buffo couple, Anita and Pierrino, are present. As Dorfmüller
sagaciously observes, “While Lehár was busy elevating
operetta to the temple of high art … the waltz (its traditional
basis) was being replaced by the foxtrot and the musical was waiting
in the wings…”
Willy Boskovsky, clearly no stranger to the genre, provides a strong,
scintillating accompaniment to the singers and his Münchner Rundfunkorchester
play their hearts out for him. Nicolai Gedda, long one of my favourite
tenors, is supremely expressive as the hapless Octavio. He is cockily
confident of his prowess with the ladies in his early ‘Freunde,
das Leben ist lebenswert! … O signora, o signorina’ then
quickly falls under the spell of his femme fatale, Giuditta,
who dreams of a man who can make her really happy - ‘Ah! Wohin,
wohin will es mich treiben’. Edda Moser’s Giuditta spins
sensual allure and wild danger aplenty to exotic languorous African
rhythms. Moser’s tonal range is remarkable, her projection strong.
All her charisma is magnified in her famous night club song, ‘Meine
Lippen …’. The lovers' duet in the North African garrison
town during their brief spell of happiness, ‘Schön wie
die blaue Sommernacht’ is magical. Gedda ably, fervidly supports
Moser’s ecstatic flights. In turn, in scene three Octavio sings
passionately of his love for Giuditta declaring she is his sun and
destiny in another of the show’s hit numbers, the lovely ‘Welch
Tiefes Rätsel!...Du bist meine Sonne!’ Shortly afterwards
she vents her fury when he abandons her as his soldierly duty summons
him. Later, Gedda, as the operetta reaches its sad ending, is so affectingly
broken as he sings of the wreckage of his dreams in ‘Schönste
der Frau’n’.
The supporting team of lyric soprano Brigitte Lindner as Anita and
Martin Finke as an equally lighter-weight Pierrino give welcome relief
from the sadness. They both shine brightly through all their duets
from the beginning of the story when Pierrino sells his fruit, his
barrow and his donkey to finance a new life for them as entertainers.
They also delight in their ecstatic fourth scene when they look forward
to a blissful married life together. Lindner has a most impressive
coloratura range.
An impressive and expressive Giuditta. Come on Arthaus or Opus Arte
let’s have a Giuditta DVD.
Ian Lace
