Botstein, ASO unearth buried treasure with Strauss’s “Guntram”
Guntram, Richard Strauss’s first opera, didn’t bomb when it premiered in Weimar in 1894. That happened with the second performance in Munich when the orchestra dubbed the opera a “scourge of God.” Strauss would refer to it as his “child of sorrow.”
For Leon Botstein, who is always eager to resurrect forgotten musical curiosities, Guntram was an obvious choice. Strauss has been Botstein’s particular focus over the past decade, as he has led the American Symphony Orchestra in concert performances of Feuersnot, Die ägyptische Helena, Die Liebe der Danae, Friedenstag, and Daphne. On Friday evening at Carnegie Hall, it was Guntram’s turn.
As a young man, Strauss idolized Wagner. Emulating his idol, Strauss wrote the libretto, as well as the music for Guntram. On the literary front, the young Strauss was no Wagner.
The opera tells the story of Guntram, a member of the League of the Champions of Love, a secret society that protects the poor from the tyrannical Duke Robert. The knight quickly falls in love with Freihild, who is unhappily married to the cruel Duke Robert and seeks solace by aiding the victims of his cruelty. In short order, Guntram impetuously kills the Duke, leads a doomed peasant revolt, is defeated in battle, and is sentenced to death. The opera concludes with Guntram walking out of his dungeon cell, bidding Freihild farewell.
Strauss never forgot the sting of the critics’ words, but eventually, he heeded them. In 1939, he revisited Guntram in preparation for an upcoming radio broadcast of the opera in honor of his 70th birthday. Botstein presented this pared-down version, which runs about two hours.
A less-than-inspired plot and its dramatic inertia, chiefly due to the opera’s many extended monologues are not the only obstacles to overcome in Guntram. Finding a tenor to do justice to the punishing title role is an equal challenge, but John Matthew Myers was just the man. In the endless stretches of Guntram’s three long narratives, Myers was indefatigable, singing with burnished tone, dramatic acuteness, and enthusiasm.. The upper reaches of the tenor’s range were impressive, but the fullness and beauty of his voice below the staff, where much of the role’s vocal line lies, were even more so.
The pious and virtuous Freihild is a cipher dramatically, but Angela Meade lavished vocal luster on the music Strauss wrote for her. The climax of which is Freihild’s narrative when she relinquishes longing for death, to embrace life and her love for Guntram. It culminates with glorious, soaring music, similar to that of “Cäcilie,” a song that he wrote for Pauline de Ahna, who originated the role, as a wedding gift. Meade sang it magnificently.
Bass-baritone Kevin Short sang with his usual authority and firm tone as the Old Duke, who at first welcomes Guntram as the rescuer of his daughter, but later is intent on extracting revenge for the murder of his son. The role of Duke Robert is short and one-dimensional, but baritone Alexander Birch Elliott’s clear, penetrating voice and dramatic intensity made one wish it were longer.
Tenor Rodell Rosel’s Fool was brittle, piercing, and outrageous. Bass-baritone Nate Mattingly was earnest and fresh-voiced as Friedhold, demanding that Guntram appear before the Champions of Love to account for his crimes. Katharine Goeldner etched the Old Woman’s despair and pain of having her husband and son killed, daughters dishonored, and her home destroyed at the hands of Duke Robert’s men with biting intensity.
The men of the Bard Festival Chorale sang heartily as the Minnesånger celebrated Duke Robert’s victory over his unruly subjects. Their best singing came as monks chanting over his slain body.
Mahler appreciated the beauty of Strauss’s score, performing the Preludes to the first and third acts of the opera in Vienna and with the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall. Its splendors were revealed instantly in Botstein’s carefully sculpted reading of the opening prelude, which the ASO played with shimmering transparency.
Throughout, Botstein kept a tight rein on tempos, forging headlong through the opera, even at its most dramatically impenetrable sections, and providing the space for Myers and Meade to sing Strauss’s vocal lines so splendidly. Most importantly, Botstein proved Strauss right. Guntram indeed contains so much beautiful music that it deserves to be heard. Staged, might be another matter.
