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Unsung Schreker
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18624 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1991 |
1,312 Words |
| Author
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Lawrence O'Toole
Lawrence O'Toole writes for Entertainment Weekly and other
national publications. |
Humankind has forever been obsessed with the quest for happiness, that quicksilver quality which, happily for drama, nearly always proves elusive. Perhaps the most outsized irony in this ongoing search lies in the sorry fact that people do not recognize whatever happiness comes their way because they're too busy looking for it elsewhere, continually hoping to grasp some unattainable ideal or nonexistent perfection.
This is the theme, and a powerful one it is, of Franz Schreker's 1912 opera Der ferne Klang, from a libretto by the composer himself. It was given its first performance at the Vienna Staatsoper this April, where it was actually supposed to have had its world premiere in 1912. The work became orphaned at the Staatsoper after Felix Weingartner resigned in 1911 and his successor, Hans Gregor, didn't care for the work and would not stage it. A year later it was given in Frankfurt and instantly became popular. Subsequent performances were led by the likes of Erich Kleiber, Otto Klemperer, Fritz Reiner, and Alexander Zemlinsky in cities as diverse as Stockholm and Leningrad.
It is not difficult at all to see the opera's appeal, blending as it does melodrama and romance, angst with coincidence. The hero (or rather antihero), Fritz, is a young composer who leaves his sweetheart, Grete, in pursuit of "der ferna Klang," or "the distant sound" (eerily supplied by the harmonium in Schreker's orchestra). Grete is hopelessly heartbroken, but Fritz tells her he will not find peace until he is able to capture "that mysteriously dreamlike sound." In despair, Grete flees her unhappy life in the village.
Ten years later Fritz meets Grete in a brothel on an island in Venice where she is the most desired courtesan. Fritz has still not found his treasured tone and, though admitting to wanting Grete more than ever, is appalled that she is a prostitute. More years pass and Fritz's latest opera, The Harp, premieres only to be a failure; he is dying. Grete, now a streetwalker, comes to him and rejoined with her he hears the elusive tone--but, alas, it is too late. Fritz dies in Grete's arms.
Viennese Neuroticism
If all of this sounds like turn of the century Viennese neuroticism let loose, it most certainly is: a dose of ah-sweet-bitterness-of-life. Schreker was very much a man of his time. The bulk of his nine operas, of which Der ferne Klang is best known, admittedly among a handful of connoisseurs, deal in suppressed emotions and sexual
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