opera notebook
some operas I have seen on videoCarl Maria von Weber, Euryanthe (1823)
libretto by Helmina von Chezy
Musiktheater an der Wien, 2018
- Conductor: Constantin Trinks
- Director: Christof Loy
- Set Designer: Johannes Leiacker
- Euryanthe: Jacquelyn Wagner
- Adolar: Norman Reinhardt
- Lysiart: Andrew Foster-Williams
- Eglantine: Theresa Kronthaler
Assessments of this little-known opera tend to blame its little-knownness on a clunky libretto by the Romantic intellectual Helmina von Chezy. I think there's more than a little sexism in blaming von Chezy while exonerating Carl Maria von Weber. Despite his innovative commitment to through-sung composition, Weber seems to have seen Euryanthe as a very-deliberately-paced vehicle for a series of (lovely) Lieder.
That's not to say that this is a great libretto. Here's how Clive Brown synopsizes a key plot point in his 1992 Grove Music article:
Euryanthe reluctantly reveals that the ghost of Adolar’s sister Emma appeared to her and told her that, out of grief at her lover Udo’s death in battle, she committed suicide with poison contained in her ring and cannot find rest until the ring has been washed by the tears of an innocent girl in despair.O-kay. This would be convoluted enough as the main plot of a drama. But in Euryanthe the Emma-and-the-ring backstory is relegated to being narrated by Euryanthe in a tedious recitative. Weber is noted for his influence on Wagner, and possibly this kind of thing in Euryanthe inspired Wagner's favorite device of having somebody drone on for a quarter-of-an-hour providing exposition.
Stepping back from details, though, Euryanthe is your basic love polygon. Adolar loves Euryanthe. She loves him back. Lysiart is jealous. He wants to break up the happy couple. Meanwhile, Euryanthe's confidante Eglantine is jealous too, and schemes to break the couple up from the other direction. Great! The songs that Weber gives these characters are full of emotional tension, and in this 2018 Vienna production they are beautifully sung.
The staging gets in the way, though. It is a simple set, a sort of ballroom for the chorus to wander in and out of the way opera choruses always seem to do. There are some chairs scattered around to get in their way, a piano stage right, and inexplicably a bed downstage left. Characters continually appear in scenes where they don't belong, to emphasize (I guess) that the singers are thinking about these "offstage" characters. At one point, Lysiart sings of his passion for Euryanthe while pacing around the stage buck naked. I guess this points to his animal nature but it sure the heck makes no sense.