After his atonal Second
Symphony and the taboo-busting symbolist
Jonny Spielt Auf Krenek set to
work on a trilogy of one act operas
that was complete almost within a year.
The earlier stylistic extremes were
replaced by a return to what he once
called a Puccinian cantilena – but the
intensity of composition saw no let-up.
No sooner was the ink dry on Jonny
(four days in fact) than The Dictator
was begun, a satire on Mussolini. It
lasts twenty-five minutes, a strongly
compressed piece that opens in taut
neo-classical style and is broadly traditional
and post-Wagnerian. It’s fuelled by
the will to Power and Desire, turbulent
fusions of politics and sexuality: revenge
and assassination attempts thwarted
by the seductive allure of the Great
Man and bitter ironies of that kind.
Thus recollections are accompanied by
discordant orchestral interjections
and the most rapturous and romantic
music in the whole opera occurs as the
wife of the crippled, war-blinded officer
sings with him a bel canto duet in which
they muse on the subject of killing
the Dictator. There’s a fugal start
to Scene II, which grows in romantic
authority until a trio of exultant lyricism
emerges. All this underscores assertions
of will, the corruptibility of political
design by human glamour and power and
the tragic-comedic alignments of sexuality.
Das Geheime Königreich
(The Secret Kingdom) followed hard
on the heels of The Dictator. It’s
a more benign work in which a King,
constantly proclaiming his unworthiness,
effectively renounces his crown to his
duplicitous Queen. His Court Jester
guards the Crown until he is tricked
into relinquishing it; meanwhile a civil
war rages. If there were at least the
vaguest of Straussian hints in The
Dictator, here we have distinct
Mozartian allusions, in the form of
a trio of scolding women. Opening with
an expressionist cryto-Bergian choral
cry we are soon released on some rococo
music for the Jester. The King, pursued,
is accompanied by a mordant and weary
sounding bassoon and there’s plenty
of shrewish up-to-date coloratura and
contemporary dance with mildly satiric
intent. In fact there is a lot packed
into a short, if chaotic, book: a drunk
scene, Ovidian Metamorphosis, Straussian
cheek and Midsummer Night’s Dream Mendelssohnianisms.
Perhaps against my better judgement
I loved it.
The last of the trio
of one acters was a spoof on the then
vogue for the Boxer, embodiment of the
Male, entitled Schwergewicht oder
Die Ehre Der Nation (Heavyweight
or The Glory of the Nation). How
to describe this tumultuous fifteen-minute
riot? There’s plenty of dance music
– especially Latin American – in the
sliver of an Introduction as well as
waltzes. The orchestra undercuts the
journalist with a fatuous trumpet line.
A pushy intellectual with her "strong
subconscious" enjoys being smacked about
by the boxer, and adultery and prurience
rule the roost. Meanwhile the object
of everyone’s fascination, the dumb
ox boxer, gets strapped to his rowing
machine maybe for perpetuity, a kind
of Sisyphean horror that Krenek likes
to inflict on his deranged cast of Weimar
socio-sexual misfits.
The performances under
Marek Janowski are thoroughly accomplished
- hard-edged and brittle, or faux melismatically
romantic as necessary. The orchestra
has a fine and pungent array of principals.
The acoustic of the Jesus-Christus-Kirche
is sympathetically captured. Texts are
in English as well as German; notes
are bilingual, majoring on the technical
means Krenek employs to distinguish
and make thematic points. It all makes
for a tangy mid-twenties brew.
Jonathan Woolf
CAPRICCIO 60 107 [44.17 + 42.12] 
