Richard FLURY (1896-1967)
Die Helle Nacht (1932-1935)
Julia Sophie Wagner (soprano), Stephanie Bühlmann (soprano), Magnus Vigilius (tenor), Eric Stoklossa (tenor), Daniel Ochoa (baritone), Oğulcan Yılmaz (bass)
Gärtnerplatz Kammerchor
Göttingen Symphony Orchestra/Paul Mann
rec. 13-22 May, 2021, Lokhalle, Göttingen, Germany
Reviewed as 16-bit download from press preview
TOCCATA CLASSICS TOCC0580 [48:24 + 58:25]
Swiss composer Richard Flury was a big fish in a small pond. After completing composition studies with Joseph Marx in Vienna, Flury returned to the region of his birth, becoming a music teacher and conductor in Solothurn, Switzerland. Occasional travels around the country as a guest conductor were the farthest he ever roamed. Despite this, a laundry list of contemporary greats recognized his worth as a composer: Pablo Casals, Franz Lehár, Joseph Marx, Hermann Scherchen, Othmar Schoeck, Richard Strauss, Felix Weingartner, and others.
Toccata Classics has engaged in a labor of love recording Flury’s output. So far, there are discs for ballet (TOCC0552), orchestral music (TOCC0601), and the opera A Florentine Tragedy (TOCC0427). There is even a full-length biography published by Toccata Press (ISBN: 978-0-907689-44-7). Now comes this recording of Flury’s second opera, Die Helle Nacht or “The Bright Night.”
Like the better-known story of A Florentine Tragedy – Flury unknowingly competed with Alexander Zemlinsky’s own setting of the Oscar Wilde story – Die Helle Nacht also deals in psychological drama as two men duel over the fate of a woman. The scene is set in Paris, in the late autumn of 1514. A doctor, tormenting himself over the possibility of his wife’s unfaithfulness for one night, years ago, broods as ever in his room. Outside, festivities for the arrival of English princess Mary Tudor, new wife of King Louis XII, occur with torchlight and candles, the “bright night” of the title. The doctor’s protégée, Robert, flirts both with his sweetheart Céline and with Solange, the doctor’s “dear wife” who has gone to church just as she does every night, except once, years ago. Sexual tension between Robert and Solange simmers via a fragment of Viennese waltz, historically anachronistic but musically apt. Sexual and jealous tension continue to mount throughout Act One as the doctor, Solange, and Robert navigate their difficult relationships until Solange explicitly asserts her decision to stay with her husband. Solange tells Robert he has come into her life too late, that she loves her husband “like a lovely, deep affliction,” and sends him away with a motherly kiss on the head.
Act Two consists almost entirely of a dialogue between the doctor and a knight, whose body arrives as a favor from the local Duke. Merely injured, not dead, the recovered knight and doctor discuss life, love, and death in a series of scenes that increasingly echo the mounting tension of A Florentine Tragedy. The knight declares the faithlessness of women and his shallow attitude toward them in return, except for one woman, years ago, who spent one night with him. As the unknowing knight shares more details, it becomes ever clearer to the doctor his “dear wife” was unfaithful to him after all, with this very man. Instead of a duel with swords, this pair of antagonists duel with words as the doctor reveals he has poisoned the knight’s wine. Gloating that his death is imminent, the doctor claims he yet has an antidote that could revive the knight. The knight greets his death with the carefree attitude he has taken to life, apart from his regret for the love he could have had with Solange. At the last moment, the doctor realizes murdering the knight will not release him from his own self-imposed agony and decides to give the knight the antidote after all. He sends the bewildered knight off and greets his wife, who has awakened from her sleep. Why is he still awake? Did she hear an argument with a half-remembered voice? The doctor assures her she was merely dreaming. He will cease his relentless paranoia over her behavior but will keep a “sweet secret…unto death.” Solange muses that he now seems “as if you had never looked at me before.” Forgiveness takes the place of vengeance for reuniting husband and wife.
Flury’s music is small in scale but marvelous in effect. The harmony is mildly conservative but with hints of Impressionism. Flury obtains a wonderful variety of sounds and tone colors using only a modest orchestra. The overall timbre is bright, with much woodwind and upper strings. Celesta, xylophone, and triangle help illustrate the “bright night” atmosphere. In contrast, church bells coupled with low brass intrude when the doctor questions the faithfulness of his “dear wife.” The Viennese waltz becomes suitably delirious over the course of the first act. The opera is through-composed with no separate “numbers” for arias or set pieces. Apart from the musical signposts mentioned, Flury does not use leitmotifs in the style of Wagner – no separate musical themes for each character. The overall effect is of ingenuity within constraints.
The singers handle their parts with confidence. There is not a weak link in the casting, even for the heldentenor role of the knight. The orchestra is very active, responding to every twist and turn of the action. The recording balances the orchestra and voices, neither burying the other. Toccata’s documentation is, as usual, without equal. There is an essay by the composer’s son, Urs Joseph Flury, passages from Flury’s autobiography, and a brief synopsis from the work’s premiere on Radio Bern in 1935, as well as a thorough plot summary complete with interpretation of its symbolism by conductor Paul Mann. There follows the libretto in German and English.
I would encourage curious listeners to investigate this opera. Flury’s music is hardly earth-shattering but it is lively, tuneful, and dramatic. For those still undecided, MusicWeb has reviewed older recordings of Flury’s orchestral and chamber music on the Gallo label; they give a further sense of Flury’s style. There is orchestral music (review), string quartets (review), violin works (review), piano works (review), a piano quintet (review, review), and even a quartet for natural horns (review).
Christopher Little
