Erich Wolfgang Korngold: Violanta (CD)

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957)

Annemarie Kremer, Michael Kupfer-Radecky, Norman Reinhardt, Peter Sonn, Anna Maria Chiuri, Gabriel Alexander Wernick, Coro del Teatro Regio di Parma, Orchestra del Teatro Regio di Parma, Pinchas Steinberg

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Artists:: Annemarie Kremer, Michael Kupfer-Radecky, Norman Reinhardt, Peter Sonn, Anna Maria Chiuri, Gabriel Alexander Wernick, Coro del Teatro Regio di Parma, Orchestra del Teatro Regio di Parma, Pinchas Steinberg
Label:: Dynamic
Year of recording ca.:: 2020
Item number:: 9831621
UPC/EAN:: 8007144078768
Release date:: 19.6.2020

Other releases of Violanta	Price
Blu-ray Disc	EUR 24.99*

Audiovisuelles Debüt für die frühe Korngold-Oper »Violanta«
Auf dem Programm des Opernhauses in Turin stand im Januar 2020, als italienische Erstaufführung, Erich Wolfgang Korngolds Oper »Violanta«. Die Aufführungen wurden selbstverständlich in originaler deutscher Sprache gesungen.

Die spätromantische Geschichte um Liebe, Eifersucht und – gegen Ende – tödlichen Hass zählt zu den großen Meisterwerken des Komponisten vor seiner Emigration in die USA, obwohl sie seltener aufgeführt wird als beispielsweise »Die tote Stadt«. Das Erstaunliche: Korngold schrieb das Werk im Alter von 17 Jahren und es war bereits seine zweite Oper. Trotz der Jugend des Komponisten zeigt »Violanta« bereits alle Facetten seines bemerkenswerten Könnens.

Die Inszenierung der Produktion lag in den Händen von Pier Luigi Pizzi. In den Hauptrollen brillieren Annemarie Kremer, Michael Kupfer-Radecky und Norman Reinhardt. Mit Pinchas Steinberg lag die musikalische Leitung bei einem echten Opernkenner und -könner.

- Dies ist die erste audiovisuelle Einspielung der »Violanta«; die 1980 entstandene Erstaufnahme von Marek Janowski ist lange vergriffen
- Die Uraufführung im Hoftheater München leitete niemand Geringeres als Bruno Walter
- Die Aufführung wurde im Januar 2020 im Turiner Teatro Regio in 4K gefilmt

Product Information

The musical setting of the work is one where different styles meet and clash. The work is imbued with German romanticism, but we also hear echoes of the world of operetta, and of the lightness of Strauss. Violanta’s score has flashes of Debussy at the same time as Schönberg and Bartók; it wraps the listener in a gloomy atmosphere before expanding a few measures later into a hugely intense, lyrical phrase. Although Violanta might initially appear as a verismo love drama, some elements actually distance it from this connotation.Korngold's music, with its highly refined orchestration, perfectly paints the contrast between the dark and deathly atmosphere of the oppressive world which Simone forces upon his wife and the sudden glimpses of life, sensuality and passion brought by Alfonso, making Violanta one of the masterpieces of the early twentieth century. Driven by a powerful desire to take revenge on the man who had seduced her sister, leading to her suicide, Violanta persuades her husband Simone to become her accomplice and kill him. But after meeting and enticing her victim – Alfonso, the illegitimate son of the King of Naples – her feelings turn into passion, and her heart is overturned. So strong is her love for him now that in order to save Alfonso’s life she takes the blow meant for him and dies.Korngold sets this opera in an imaginary, decadent fifteenth-century Venice, reflecting a fascination for the Renaissance and for the themes of passion and death that were in vogue at the time. Pier Luigi Pizzi, stage director, costume and lighting designer for this production, chose to set the action at the beginning of the 1920s in a decadent Venice, where distant echoes of a melancholic Carnival add a sense of gloom to the whole performance. Here is how he decided to portray the main characters:
“Violanta is an eerie woman; she’s moody, delusional and eccentric; a dark lady, vaguely vampiric. This opera is a bourgeois drama about lack of communication. This yearning for a total, absolute life without any rules signifies the failure to lead a normal life, to resign to routine, to accept one’s solitude ... Alfonso is a seducer in the style of D’Annunzio, no woman can resist him ... One must look at these characters from a certain distance, with irony, make them live in the literary environment in which they were born ... Simone Trovai is the typical cuckolded husband. Pathetic... I based my direction on a story which I try to strip of all banalities, also its setting, preferring to exploit the dramatic atmosphere created by the music.”
Conductor Pinchas Steinberg declared: “This music is full of colours, full of emotions; it’s incredible the scale of emotions and colours and expression that [Korngold] puts in this score, not only for the orchestra but also for the singers, and it’s a miracle that a 17-year-old boy could write such a thing...”

Reviews

»Hervorzuheben ist bei dieser Produktion vor allem die Tontechnik, die in kristalliner Klarheit die musikalische Darbietung übermittelt. Ein Kabinettstück ist das orchestrale Interludio vor der großen finalen Auseinandersetzung.« (Fono Forum, Oktober 2020)