A Rienzi Revival
GOLDMAN, ALBERT
ON MUSIC By Albert Goldman A Rienzi Revival In a country where so many fine operas go unperformed simply because there are so few opera companies of any sort to perform them, it seems an...
...Irene Jordan sang the heroine's role in a passionate, splendid coloratura...
...The opera's provenance and its value in terms of Wagner's later achievements were accurately described by the composer himself: "To this work, which owed its conception and formal execution to my earliest impressions of Spontini's heroic operas as well as the brilliant genre of Parisian grand opera by Auber, Meyerbeer, and Halévy, I attach no importance...
...The soul of grand opera, however, is not in the music (everything of musical value in Rienzi is contained in the famous overture), nor even in the singing...
...Rienzi was portrayed by Birger Bergquist, a new Swedish tenor who weighs slightly less than the late Jussi Bjoerling and whose voice is a good deal less beautiful and ringing...
...Today, though, we attach some slight historical importance to Rienzi because it was Wagner's first successful opera and one of the most extravagant examples of that "brilliant genre" which he, more than any other composer, finally buried in oblivion...
...Certainly, no more suitable symbol of big business could be found than one of these costly and materially imposing concoctions...
...Hopefully, someday someone will convince one of the country's wealthy corporations that their "image" would be substantially enhanced by sponsoring a full-scale production of a Romantic grand opera...
...During the performance's most dramatic moments, one was startled—and then amused—by the blizzard of turning pages in the chorus and by the sight of husky baritones reaching for non-existent swords or thrusting invisible daggers into spotless shirt fronts...
...and Grace Hoffman, a mezzo-soprano, performed the travesty part of Adriano with great vocal and dramatic skill...
...Vocally, the performance was quite satisfactory...
...the original production of Rienzi required no less than 537 elaborate period costumes...
...Repeatedly coming on stage in a West Pointer's posture, then executing a sharp tothe-right-flank movement so as to move down center, Berquist delivered his arias like a soloist with a men's glee club...
...The reason for this failure doubtlessly was a lack of finances...
...ON MUSIC By Albert Goldman A Rienzi Revival In a country where so many fine operas go unperformed simply because there are so few opera companies of any sort to perform them, it seems an unpardonable waste of energy and talent to attempt the revival of a work like Richard Wagner's Rienzi: The Last of the Tribunes...
...Instead, we sat for threeand-a-half hours—the original score runs five hours—and stared at rows of black-robed choristers ranked above an on-stage orchestra, while off to the left, in a very confined stage area the principal singers half-heartedly enacted their roles in evening clothes and bouffante coiffures...
...Missing as well was the tremendously impressive "immolation finale," where a raging mob hurls firebrands into the Roman Capitol which collapses in flames upon the hero and every other sympathetic character in the opera...
...But "brilliant" is the last word one would be likely to employ to describe the recent New York production of the opera, the first in 40 years, by Thomas Scherman and the Concert Opera Association at Lincoln Center's Philharmonic Hall...
...Here there was none of the spectacular pageantry of Renaissance Rome: colorfully clad nobles, masses of marching citizens, priests and monks...
...It is to be found in the spectacle, and here the Scherman production completely failed to realize Wagner's intention...
Vol. 47 • January 1964 • No. 1
