Schreker: Das Spielwerk und die Prinzessin.(Sound Recording Review)

Henning, Mayer; Schopflin; Kiel Opera Choruses, Kiel Philharmonic Orchestra, Windfuhr. Text and translation. CPO 999 958-2 (2) (Naxos, dist.)

In March 1913, when Franz Schreker's "Mysterium" Das Spielwerk und die Prinzessin (The Musical Instrument and the Princess) had its premiere, the composer was riding high. Seven months earlier, Der Ferne Klang had been a runaway success, and anticipation for his new opera ran so high that it opened simultaneously in Vienna and Frankfurt. The score bore a dedication to the newly widowed Alma Mahler, with whom Schreker had recently had an affair. (Hadn't everyone?)

Things didn't work out quite as planned. The work puzzled its audience, and the influential critic Julius Korngold (father of composer Erich Wolfgang) panned it. Das Spielwerk staggered through five performances in Vienna and a mere three in Frankfurt before disappearing off the boards. Schreker later revised the opera, but the performance on this release, based on a Kiel production from earlier this year, uses the original version. It's the opera's first recording.

The initial failure of this fascinating work is easy to understand. The libretto, by Schreker himself, was labeled by one critic as "the worst text since the creation of the world." It doesn't relate a recognizable sequence of events so much as it evokes a series of extreme, disturbing psychological states. At times, the opera's action is so obscure that it seems to anticipate the latter-day theatrical abstractions of Richard Foreman and Robert Wilson. The stage directions concentrate more on lighting cues than on human movement, almost as if Schreker had envisioned Das Spielwerk as a kind of illustrated tone poem. (The photos in the CD booklet indicate that the Kiel production jettisoned the composer's precise scenic indications in favor of postmodern, Euro-trashy imagery.)

The plot all but defies synopsis: by comparison, Hofhmannsthal's scenario for Die Frau ohne Schatten is a model of classical lucidity and restraint. An old inventor, Florian, has fashioned a glockenspiel (the instrument of the title) for a depraved Princess, whose wickedness has silenced

its magical music. The Princess has ...