Walter Braunfels (1882-1954) is one of those composers famous in their time but muzzled by history. We had to wait until the 1990s to rediscover it, like Alexander Zemlinsky, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Viktor Ullmann, Hans Krasa… Despite their success, they disappeared from the poster with the advent of the Third Reich, who classified them “degenerates”, because Jews or outside Nazi aesthetic criteria. They were then neglected after 1945 by the proponents of serial music, who, while inventing other shackles, made a clean sweep of the tonal order which they judged as an element having led to dictatorship and ultra- conservatism…
Far from the school of Schönberg, Walter Braunfels is on the same level as post-romanticism. Qualified for “degenerate” after having refused to compose the anthem of Hitler’s Germany then to have a quarter of Jewish blood by his father, although a Protestant converted to Catholicism, he saw his work prohibited after 1933.
Inspired by Aristophanes
On a libretto adapted from Aristophanes by the composer himself, the music with exacerbated harmony is of paroxysmal expressiveness, imbued with a pantheistic naturalism. The four central roles are a Rossignol, held by a coloratura soprano, Bonespoir by a heroic tenor, Fidèlami and, finally, Prometheus, two bass-baritones.
Two city dwellers, tired of the company of men, take refuge in the kingdom of birds. They convince them to build their ideal city and become masters of the sky by intercepting the smoke from the sacrifices that men raise to the gods. Zeus punishes them with a storm that destroys their city, prompting them to return to the humans…
Similarities and family resemblance
At the beginning of Act II, the climate is comparable to that of the great scene of the Emperor of The woman without a shadow by Richard Strauss. But it is impossible that the two composers inspired each other, since their two operas were composed in parallel… The storm plunges into The Phantom Ship of Wagner and the penultimate scene at the end of the Twilight of the Gods, while the final is close toAriadne in Naxos – Strauss again. The general atmosphere announces the film music in the Hollywood aesthetic illustrated in particular by the exiled Korngold.
An exemplary voice cast
The solo cast is exemplary (Marie-Ève Munger, Tuomas Katajala, Cody Quattlebaum, Josef Wagner), and the choir of the Opera, although masked, still impresses.
A talented young Korean conductor, Sora Elisabeth Lee, replaces the holder of the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra, Aziz Shokhakimov, positive for Covid. Like five soloists from the wind desks relieved by extras who came out with honors within a flamboyant phalanx. It’s a pity that the staging, without birds, by Ted Huffman, brilliant director of actors, situates the plot in a greyish decor of an open space office which hardly invites you to dream…