The forest (opera)
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| Title: | The forest |
| Shape: | Musical drama in one act |
| Original language: | German |
| Music: | Ethel Smyth |
| Libretto : | Ethel Smyth |
| Premiere: | April 9, 1902 |
| Place of premiere: | Court Opera Berlin |
| Place and time of the action: | middle Ages |
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Der Wald is an opera by the British composer Ethel Smyth from 1902, who also wrote the German libretto . They spoke of the one aktige piece as a musical drama, but in fact it is more of a mix of music and drama typical German Romantic opera with prologue and epilogue . It was on April 9, 1902 the Court Opera Berlin premiere .
The late romantic work leads into the world of natural mysticism. The time of the happening is the Middle Ages . The mistress of the forest desires a young woodcutter and drives him into misery with her desire. The drama is combined with strong social criticism in which the hierarchies are turned upside down.
Like the other two early operas by Ethel Smyth, Fantasio and The Wreckers , the forest is still completely romantic . In some places it could be mistaken for a work by Robert Schumann or Johannes Brahms .
Performance history
After Fantasio, the forest is the composer's second opera. According to John Yohalem of the Metropolitan Opera, the fact that she wrote the libretto in German is due to Smyth's intention to make this work heard again in German houses. After the first success at the premiere in Weimar in 1898, it was able to report a success again despite the hostile German-British mood as a result of the Boer War . The work was not well received in Germany and was premiered in London at the Royal Opera House in England in July 1902 . With the premiere in March of the following year at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the work of a woman was on stage for the first time. (It wasn't until over 100 years later that an opera by a woman was to be performed again - Kaija Saariaho's opera L'Amour de loin in 2016). The reviews in the New World were extremely positive. For example, on March 12, 1903, the New Yorker World wrote:
“After an hour of ultra-modern music, strident, formless, passionate music that stirred the blood with clangor of brass, the shrieks of strings, the plaint of wood winds and disdained to woo the senses with flower-soft melodic phrase, the audience at the Metropolitan Opera House clamored for the composer and held its breath when she appeared. A fragile creature, feminine to her fingertips in rather old-fashioned gown of black silk, red roses in her dark hair and a courtesy like grandmother used to make… She was Ethel M. Smyth, a young Englishwoman, whose one-act opera, The forest, had just received its first American presentation…. ”
"After an hour of ultra-modern, shrill, formless, passionate music that stirred the blood with brass tones and frightened the blood with the screams of strings, in which the lament of the woodwinds and mild, melodic floral phrases have wooed the spurned senses, the audience at the Metropolitan Opera House reacted loudly for the composer and held their breath when she appeared. A fragile creature, feminine to the fingertips in a rather old-fashioned dress made of black silk, with red roses in her dark hair and a courtesy like grandmother did ... She was Ethel M. Smyth, a young English woman whose one-act play, The Forest , had just received its first American presentation. ... "
Elsewhere it said:
“The singers were repeatedly called in front of the curtain, and Miss Smyth had an ovation of almost ten minutes ... She almost drowned in flowers ... Miss Smyth's music definitely belongs to the German school. It shows the influence of Wagner, but does not imitate him in any way ... "
Individual evidence
- ↑ Cornelia Bartsch , Rebecca Grotjahn , Melanie Unseld : Felsensprengerin, bridge builder, trailblazer: the composer Ethel Smyth. Vol. 2 of contributions to the cultural history of music. BoD, 2010 ISBN 978-3-86906-068-2 , p. 233
- ^ Fanfare , July / August 1993
- ^ A b From The Metropolitan Opera Archives: A Woman's Opera at the Met , accessed February 10, 2016.
- ↑ Karsten Wenzig: On the life and work of Ethel Mary Smyth , GRIN Verlag 2008, ISBN 978-3-638-04617-6 , p. 6
- ↑ Rena Jacob: Ethel Mary Smyth • composer with assertiveness. wider-des-vergessens.org (Sunday News) , accessed April 6, 2018.