“I don’t have any more father, mother, sisters, brothers in the world. If I went back home, I would find everything desolate and empty.” When did this strophic aria about loss, disorder and early suffering, so soulfully sung not only by Fritz Wunderlich, last sounded on a big German stage?
Now she is singing the Knappe Veit (with a delicate tenor dumpling: Sven Hjörleifsson) with a wine bottle in a lumberjack shirt at the Leipzig Opera, sitting on a huge but sober veneer wall. It could hardly be more factual, even if the Gewandhaus Orchestra has the fine mood under the forward-pushing Christoph Gedschold. Some of the older ladies in the gossip-loving audience wipe a secret tear from the corner of their eye.
Yes, not only Richard Wagner, also Albert Lortzing is (again) from Leipzig. He doesn’t come from here, but unlike the German opera-GröFaZ of the long 19th century that outshined them all, the composer, actor, singer and impresario, who was born in Berlin in 1801 and died of starvation in abject poverty there 50 years later, spent formative years in Leipzig Years. In 1833 he made his debut at the Stadttheater. Here Albert Lortzing became a member of the artists’ club Tunnel über der Pleiße, and in 1834 he joined the Masonic lodge “Balduin zur Linde”.
Lortzing was extremely popular in the Leipzig ensemble and excelled above all in Nestroy comedies. His tendency to improvise and deviate from the approved script made him a problem for the theater police. Even his first operas did not have it easy under the Leipzig censorship. Nevertheless, his later long-running hit “Zar und Zimmermann” premiered here in 1837, Lortzing himself sang Peter Iwanow. In 1844 he even became Kapellmeister at the Stadttheater.
But as early as April 1845, “rheumatic complaints” were the pretended reason for dismissal. Even the repeated protests from the public could not change his dismissal. His great romantic magic opera in four acts “Undine”, which is now being performed there again, was premiered in Magdeburg in 1845.
Ulf Schirmer, Leipzig’s longstanding and particularly inconspicuous conducting opera director, said goodbye in early summer with a complete 13-part Wagner cycle. The newcomer, Tobias Wolff, previously head of the Handel Festival in Göttingen, now wants to know about Lortzing. Until the crooked anniversary in 2026 (225th birthday and 175th anniversary of his death), at least one of his pieces will be added to the previous repertoire every year with “Zar und Zimmermann” and “Wildschütz”.
Lortzing prevails
The beginning with the “Undine” is at least half successful. While all the singers, with the exception of the very soprano Sarah Traubel in the title role, coped well with the not so simple mixture of vocal and spoken parts, both scenically and vocally, Tilman Köhler’s staging of the almost uncut, more than three-hour work revealed lengths and helplessness. Especially since far too often the ambience looks so neutral that you could play almost any opera in it.
Karoly Risz has built a monumental staircase that circles drearily in front of black curtains, which you climb, but which actually means nothing. Until it finally becomes a podium-surging abyss, into which the only one acting in a Biedermeier costume, Küelborn (dignified-paternal: Jonathan Michie), lets the knight Hugo (stoic: Matthias Stier), the nefarious suitor of his mermaid daughter, sink because he is his old flame Bertalda (prickly damsel: Mirjam Neururer) returns. Unfortunately, Susanne Uhl’s Eighties Mix costumes are hideous, and they look like every chorister should have been allowed to wear their favorite leisure outfit.
And yet Lortzing’s filigree music between melancholy and cheerfulness, various drinking songs (“truth lies in wine”) and swan song always prevails. This may be old-fashioned at times, but it is still fascinating today how Lortzing finds his very own tone here, 30 years after ETA Hoffmann had already created a successful opera based on the fairy tale “Undine” by Friedrich de la Motte-Fouqué. This applies to cheerfulness as well as happiness, but also to the ambivalent abysses of the not so soulless Undine, who as a character inspires composers to this day. From Henze to Detlev Glanert, who premiered his version of the material as a commission from the Deutsche Oper Berlin on the occasion of the Fontane Year 2019.
A little more romance, poetry and magic spooky could have ennobled this new Leipzig “Undine”. But while three Berlin opera houses have been ignoring Albert Lortzing for decades, his exciting revolutionary opera “Regina” will soon be released again in Leipzig. And probably also the discovery “Zum Groß-Admiral”, which Ulf Schirmer of all people just published on CD (cpo).
Somehow, some of it seems familiar. But no, despite an act taking place in the pub and aristocrats disguised as sailors, this is not a new recording of the long-running bestseller “Zar und Zimmermann”, but a self-written three-act play. “Zum Groß-Admiral” was first performed in Leipzig in 1847 because the Viennese censorship prevented it. The title refers to the dockside pub where the Earl of Rochester finds his niece.
The consequences of this circumstance are manifold: This Betty is allowed to marry her lover, the page Eduard, who is also in disguise. And Rochester gets his Corinna (who does not appear here) from the English Crown Princess Catharina, because he has managed to make her husband Heinrich, who likes to sidestep, worthy of the throne again and steer him back into her arms.
LOL – Lots of Lortzing
All of this happens so melodiously, as amiably wittily, patriotically as sentimentally. Ulf Schirmer and the Munich Radio Orchestra find the gripping, lively Lortzing intonation. And the vocal ensemble shines in ideal fullness. Highly original and fun!
Lortzing, the much underappreciated original genius, he wasn’t necessarily the hawk in Krähwinkel. But he liked to poke his contemporaries. After making her smile. As in “Undine”, when two just merry revelers initiate the catastrophe. There is no doubt that this extremely shrewd music dramatist, who had no sense of mission but wanted to entertain skilfully, he is part of our identity, which we are willingly denied. What will hopefully turn out again in Leipzig with lots of Lortzing: LOL!