FROM AROUND THE WORLD: ZURICH.(Review)

On February 25, four years after its premiere at the Vienna Festival, Franz Schubert's Alfonso und Estrella arrived in Zurich, the opera house that co-produced this staging. Zurich offered the same team: Nikolaus Harnoncourt, conductor; Jurgen Flimm, director; Erich Wonder and Florence yon Gerkan, designers. Only two singers from the Vienna performances remained. Alfred Muff, a regular member of Zurich's ensemble, sang the villain, Adolfo, and Olaf Bar, who played the senile, blind king Mauregato in Vienna, Here played the exiled king Froila. Even at the fifth performance (March 5), dozens of people queued for tickets. The production emerged a real hit with the audience, something extremely rare for Schubert's theatrical works.

Apart from Schubert's irresistible charm -- he was obviously unable to write even five minutes of uninspired music at a stretch -- the main reason for the production's success was Harnoncourt, by now the darling of Zurich's opera fans. He coaxed fascinating details from the orchestra, the steady pulse of his reading marked by subtle dynamic shadings, the natural ebb and flow of his tempos. He highlighted Schubert's instrumental felicities with elegance, but most of all he inspired the musicians with vital energy. (Ernst Raffelsberger prepared the excellent chorus.)

If the performance resembled a Liederspiel rather than an opera proper, it was definitely not the fault of Harnoncourt, who passionately pleaded for Schubert the dramatist in his program notes. Blame must lie chiefly with the composer's lack of genuine theatricality. Alfonso's static libretto concerns two rival kings, whose son and daughter fall in love despite their fathers' hatred and the advances of a voluptuary villain. By the time these cliche characters are finally reconciled, Schubert's lack of flair for dramatic pacing has become as exhausting as it is frustrating.

Flimm's production emphasized the background -- the Napoleonic wars, ...