Lost Classic – Franz Schreker’s Der Schmied von Gent
Franz Schreker? Neither had I. Heard of him, that is. Admit it. You hadn’t either. What? You’ve got a comprehensive collection of all his recorded works you dip into every quiet Sunday afternoon? You’re taking the Arthur Bliss!
There is no Schreker Society of raving acolytes – along the lines of the Finzi Society (Gerald Finzi, English genius), of which I am a proud member – to pay him homage in darkling village halls. His anniversaries are notable for the fact that they are forgotten.
Shame on all of us. The Austrian composer of only one regularly performed opera, Der ferne Klang (The distant Sound), deserves a revival. Since he died in 1934 it is his music that has become a distant sound. It deserves better. Thanks to the efforts of Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, Flanders’ largest cultural institution, Schreker now gets a reboot. Their recent production of Der Schmied von Gent (The Blacksmith of Ghent) can be viewed on Operavision.eu.
This production is a riot. It may be billed as a comic opera, but it deals with the serious 16th century political conflict between the Geus patriots of Flanders and their colonising enemy, the Spanish, personified in the Inquisition-touting, Geus-drubbing, Catholicising Duke of Alba. Not content with any old Inquisition the Duke organised his own. The result of his colonising essai, was to make the Geus of Flanders see orange. The Duke of Orange to be precise, who inflamed rebellion. His presence infuses the opera’s action.
Schreker was until now a shadowy figure, at best, in my operatic peripheral vision. Yet in 1920 he was hailed as Wagner’s successor. Der ferne Klang received more performances after its premiere in 1912 than Richard Strauss’ beloved Rosenkavalier.
Amidst the coterie of Viennese mould-breaking composers of the early 20th century, Gustav Mahler, Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, Erich Korngold – yes, snooty critics, his film score music shouldn’t rule him out as one of the greats – it was Schreker who had picked up the Wagner torch and would make it flame with the fresh dissonance and atonality that was characterising the Viennese musical movement. Turned out to be piffle, but that was partly because Schoenberg took it upon himself to write the musical history of the period and Schreker received the order of the airbrush.
Peaking in popularity with his 1920 opera Der Schatzgräber (the Treasure Hunter) Schreker faded out of fashion during the 20s, partly because of rising anti-Semitism, but also because he was no longer cutting edge. Schoenberg and Berg were seen as the true apostles of atonal music. They were also good at self-publicity.
The ability of Viennese intellectual café society to talk itself up its own fundament was seemingly unbounded. In 1918 Schoenberg had declared that Austrian musical tradition, now shorn of imperial status with the fall of the House of Habsburg, should ally with its German counterpart and “form a musical hegemony for the next 100 years.” Nearby, a housepainter with a bad moustache and a worse book was planning something politically parallel, but ten times longer.
These were fast moving times. As ditzy Weimar gave way to authoritarian Nazism, the Jewish Schreker found himself abandoned. Der Schmidt von Gent premiered in 1932 to fascist demonstrations, but in 1933 the Freiburg premiere of his last opera Christopherus, based on the life of St Christopher and oozing with contemporary political metaphors, was banned by the Nazis.
They had just raised their flag on Freiburg’s City Hall without the consent of Mayor Karl Bender. Schreker was fired from his post as professor of composition at the Akademie der Künste and died in 1934. Christopherus was not performed until 1978.
Here’s the synopsis, as allusions only will not suffice. If you’re the smug reader with the Schreker CD collection, fell free to skip it.
Act 1
The hero, Smee, is a blacksmith in Ghent during the Eighty Years War. Smee was ably sung and even better acted by baritone Leigh Melrose, carving out a niche as the go-to baritone for difficult modern works. By his side there is his long-suffering wife, played by mezzo soprano Kai Rüütel. She began her career at The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 2009, moved on to Scottish Opera and then Dutch National Opera. She played a stern, but sympathetic foil to her devious husband.
Smee is a good employer, skilled in his blacksmith profession. “My iron protects against bullets”. Well, perhaps. The Spanish Duke of Alba is the local vilain du jour and a customer. Smee hates the Spaniards and, after being denounced to the authorities by a rival, a drunkard, Slimbroek (sung by American tenor Michael J Scott), has his smithy shut down.
He is about to drown himself in the river when a mysterious temptress, Astarte, sung by emerging South African soprano, Vuvu Mpofu, and her two cohorts offer him seven years of wealth and prosperity in return for his soul. Clad in skin-tight red lycra, sporting red horns and prominent, downturned sharp ears they are clearly not Ghent locals. Reluctantly, Smee agrees, signs a black contract and his smithy enjoys a miraculous recovery, to the amazement of Smee’s wife, unaware of the Faustian pact, but nonetheless suspicious.
Act II
The seven years of plenty are almost at an end, the day of reckoning has come, and Smee is pondering how to avoid his fate. A man and a woman, travellers from afar, having a long way still to go, with an infant child, appear at the forge: their donkey has lost a shoe, which Smee, now wealthier than he could ever have imagined, is happy to replace without charge. “I could replace all the horseshoes in Flanders – in silver”.
Guess who? Joseph, Mary and the infant Jesus. Of course. Bit of a surprise, though. Their SatNav must be playing up. In return for his generosity, Joseph grants the blacksmith three wishes. Smee opts to trap anyone he chooses – in a plum tree, on a bench and in a sack. Thus armed, Smee is able to dupe the three emissaries of Hell who come to claim his soul: the executioner Hessels (plum tree), the Duke of Alba (now dead and down below, bench) and Astarte (sack). But, in an infernal vision, Lucifer himself appears and the smithy disappears into the Leie.
Act III
Smee, now old and bearded, his forge gone, dies with his faithful – and surprisingly un-aged – wife at his side and begins his journey to the other world. At first, he arrives at the gates of Hell, but the devils, remembering the trouncing he inflicted on them earlier, turn him away. Heaven next, but he is refused entry by St. Peter.
With nowhere to go, Smee decides to open a waffle stall serving food and drink to new arrivals. Why not? Wonderful touch.
Former acquaintances from Ghent (including traitorous Slimbroek) soon appear and they join in a lively drinking song. When Smee’s wife arrives, she intercedes with St. Joseph and, after weighing his good deeds against his bad, Joseph finally admits Smee into Paradise. Shoeing the donkey has finally paid off.
At one level, the opera could be seen as simplistic, mere Faust-lite. That judgement sells Schmied short. It is a powerful morality play which uses anarchic comedy to sharpen its barbs. The work has a total absence of pomposity. Schreker also wrote the libretto, so he is hammering home deeply held personal beliefs – that political oppression is miserable, humans are fallible, but not beyond redemption. He is also taking a side-swipe at the Calvinist doctrine of pre-destination. That’s why Nazis, self-appointed custodians of Germany’s inevitable destiny, hated the opera.
This was an opera debut for rising theatre star, German director Ersan Mondtag. And what a debut it turned out to be. The work is pitched in no particular period. The set is a revolving fairy-tale, brightly coloured, building, featuring Ghent on one side and a hellish version of the town on the other. The smithy is reached via a passageway in the middle of the façade. The river Leie is front of stage.
Mondtag must be a fan of the Japanese Kabuki theatre tradition. All the characters have heavily made up faces; Smee white, Slimbroek half blue, half natural (two-faced) and Astarte red, with amazing contact lenses that make her eyes glow and penetrate. She doesn’t go to Specsavers. The action is stylised, but it’s not overdone to the point of making it stilted. Kabuki tribute, not a cover version.
The comedic action reminds of Armando Iannucci’s 1917 film, The Death of Stalin. Chaos and irreverence with a solid purpose. The ante room to judgement where Smee arrives after he dies is an art gallery in which a never-ending speech is being delivered to the patiently waiting deceased by Patrice Lumumba on Congo’s independence day. He is being nice about the Belgians – which is the cruellest trick of all. Smee’s bored body language clearly shows he thinks he is in everlasting hell already.
Mondtag makes a star turn out of the minor character of St Peter, who in Act III allows the gallery crowd access to heaven by means of a velvet rope-barrier of the sort seen outside popular nightclubs, heaving heaven-weary phlegmatic shrugs the while. He shuffles like a jobsworth. St Peter has been doing business for 2,000 years – and he’s up to here.
At the finale, Smee is led in silence to the edge of the stage by Astarte, who pulls off his beard to the unaccompanied words “I don’t think so”, revealing him as Smee, the eternal dissembler. A very Mondtag, final, twist to the plot.
Is Schreker’s music any good? In one sense it could be criticised as unoperatic, as it seldom dwells on a melodic line. But the music oscillates between ephemeral tonality and clashing dissonance with fleeting theatrical purpose. A theme of melodic beauty Strauss would have developed into a set piece aria flies by and is gone, replaced by something new. It’s like watching swallows diving over a pond. The listener has to pay attention.
As I was a Schreker parvenu I watched the opera twice, to make sure I had missed nothing. I don’t think I have yet penetrated it completely. It has more to give. Opera aside, Schreker’s recorded orchestral catalogue is not huge. So far, his Romantic Suite for large orchestra has particularly caught my ear. I do think he deserves to be in with the 20th century Vienna crowd, not pushed into an anteroom, only occasionally heard.
After all, it’s easy to forget that both Bach and Mahler had to be rediscovered, after their reputations faded shortly after their own time. Schreker is not up there with either. Nor is he Wagner’s successor. But, he is worth a revival. All strength to Opera Ballet Vlaanderen. Vivat Schreker!