In the 1920s, Hans Gál was one of the successful and widely performed opera composers. After 1933, Gál had to emigrate to England because of his Hungarian-Jewish descent, his work was forgotten.
The Chinese fairy tale opera “The Sacred Duck” has now been performed again as a stage work for the first time since 1933 at the Heidelberg Theater. A parody of the fashion of fairy tale and Wagner operas that was still flourishing at the time of its premiere in 1923. And even now, this firework display can still inspire.
–
Anyone who seriously calls an opera “The sacred duck” is either not entirely consoled or is not serious. The latter is the case with the opera by Hans Gál that has been performed again at the Heidelberg Theater after almost a hundred years: the librettist Karl Michael von Levetzow wrote a brilliant parody of the fashion for fairy tale and Wagner operas that was still flourishing at the time of its premiere in 1923.
Susanne Reichardt
Open picture in detailed view
That the Wagner son Siegfried at the same time wrote a fairy tale opera called “The Holy Linden Tree” speaks for itself. Connoisseurs of the history of opera take great pleasure in the defilement of pruning verses and stick rhymes in the “Holy Duck”. Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” or “Parsifal” is quite openly targeted. But those who ironize so grandly must love what they enjoy.
Susanne Reichardt
Open picture in detailed view
The confusing act is strategy. The gods bore the admiring worship of men and so they decided to confuse them. They quickly steal the duck destined for the holy feast from Kuli Yang, who is inattentive due to love affairs. The mandarin is so angry about the duck that has disappeared that he wants to shorten Yang’s head.
Susanne Reichardt
Open picture in detailed view
Although the mandarin wife Li discovers that she has hooked up with a lower class representative, she still works for the poor drip. As a last wish he only longs to forget. The gods give this with a general state of intoxication, in which Levetzow probably also wrote his frenzied verses. And take the whole thing to the extreme by swapping the brains of mandarin and pen.
Susanne Reichardt
Open picture in detailed view
As a Mandarin, Yang not only abolishes the executioner, but also the gods. This is too much for them and everything is reversed by a counter-noise. The conclusion of the vanishing gods in the end: One should not play with human brains. If it weren’t so bitter, you could read it as a parody of the Nazis’ megalomania, which killed the librettist, composer and opera in Germany.
Susanne Reichardt
Open picture in detailed view
Sonja Trebes dispenses with the spirit of the times in her clever and extremely playful staging. The mixture of fairytale chinoiserie, martial arts gods and everyday street life works perfectly.
Susanne Reichardt
Open picture in detailed view
During the intoxication, the sky is full of poppy flowers and in the end there is literally the big sweep. The bored statue of the gods, which whirls everything around here, is efficiently dismantled. That is enough as a critique of authoritarian structures, which Gál and Levetzow also meant.
Susanne Reichardt
Open picture in detailed view
As a composer, Gál was certainly not a representative of innovative modernism. But the eclectic mix of Wagner, Puccini, Strauss and Schreker is sophisticated and sound-proof orchestrated, without getting into the record. Gál takes Levetzow’s operatic parody seriously. Dietger Holm at the conductor’s desk of the Philharmonic Orchestra does the same with Gál’s score.
Susanne Reichardt
Open picture in detailed view
The choir and ensemble are extremely homogeneous and fabulously agile. Ipča Ramanovič as Mandarin, Winfrid Mikus as Yang, the fat cat from Wilfried Staber, João Terleira as Hofmeister, James Homann and Hye-Sung Na as crooks are terrific, Caryl Owen as Li outstanding with her Wagner voice.
Susanne Reichardt
Open picture in detailed view
It may be that the opera has certain lengths. But after almost a hundred years of forgetting, you want to hear it completely. Historically abysmal as the events in the opera itself captured them. With this excavation of an opera firework, the Heidelberg Theater and its opera director Ulrike Schumann can be described as heroic.
Susanne Reichardt
Open picture in detailed view
–
–
– .
