From around the world: Amsterdam.(International ... a production of Euryanthe takes liberties with a weak libretto)(Opera Review)

For this year's collaboration of Netherlands Opera and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra at the Holland Festival, Bernard Haitink was to conduct Tristan und Isolde. When that production was canceled, conductor John Eliot Gardiner was called in. He chose Euryanthe, Weber's early-Romantic opera. Though saddled with an impossible libretto, the score seemed an excellent match for the orchestra's strengths. Netherlands Opera selected a director and cast that met with Gardiner's approval, but Gardiner withdrew from the project. Conductor Claus Peter Flohr took over, eliciting from the orchestra a truly Wagnerian sound. And that was the first problem. Whatever Euryanthe's merits, Weber is no Wagner, and only a crisp, pre-Wagnerian sound can hold one's attention during a performance of a work so lacking in dramatic interest--because the second problem is the libretto. The characters lack modern appeal, and Helmine yon Chezy's weak story and childish text would fare better in the concert hall than onstage, especially since projected titles accentuate the more ridiculous moments. Such moments are exaggerated in the melodic sort of Sprechgesang that Weber (no master of recitative, despite his gifts in writing spoken German parlando) favored between numbers. The third problem--for the singers as well as for the audience--is that Euryanthe ...