Episode 302. The Haunted Opera House, 2024 Edition

Episode 302. The Haunted Opera House, 2024 Edition

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Two years ago for Halloween, I presented the first of my “Haunted Opera House” episodes. The episode featured creepy operatic excerpts, all leaning toward the supernatural and all composed in the twentieth century. At the time, I had such a plethora of material that I produced a bonus episode of material that otherwise would have ended up in the dung heap (like the body of Faust at the end of Schnittke’s Faust Cantata, which closes the episode). We hear music from Damn Yankees featuring the red-hot Gwen Verdon; Dvořák’s Rusalka (a stunning duet with Teresa Stratas and Gwendolyn Killebrew); Respighi’s comic opera Belfagor (in which a devil [Lajos Miller] encounters his superior in a cunning young woman [Sylvia Sass]; Ernest Bloch’s Macbeth (in which Inge Borkh gives a luminous performance of Lady Macbeth’s Sleepwalking Scene); Willem Pijper’s strange musical drama based on the medieval legend of Halewijn, a Bluebeard of the Lowlands; La Chute de la Maison Usher, (the climax of Claude Debussy’s incomplete opera based on Edgar Allan Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher); and Antikrist, Rued Langgaard’s unique, indescribable, and nearly unstageable mystery play. But it is Iva Bittová’s gleefully deranged performance of Alfred Schnittke’s gruesome Faust tango which will, I predict, find its way into your nightmares!

RECORDINGS HEARD IN THIS EPISODE

Jerry Ross, Richard Adler: Whatever Lola Wants (Damn Yankees). Gwen Verdon, Orchestra conducted by Hal Hastings [1955]

Teresa Stratas

Antonín Dvořák, Jaroslav Kvapil [after Karel Jaromír Erben, Božena Němcová]: Staletá moudrost tvá všechno ví (Rusalka). Teresa Stratas, Gwendolyn Killebrew, Bohumil Gregor, The Netherlands Broadcast Orchestra [live Scheveningen 04.XI.76]

Gwendolyn Killebrew

Ottorino Respighi, Claudio Guastalla [after Ercole Luigi Morselli]: Ah! finalmente mia! (Belfagor). Sylvia Sass, Lajos Miller, Lamberto Gardelli, Hungarian State Orchestra [1989]

Lawrence Tibbett

Howard Hanson, Richard Stokes [after Nathaniel Hawthorne]: Last night came One that paced a-down the stairway (Merry Mount). Lawrence Tibbett, Tullio Serafin, Orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera [live New York 10.II.34]

Howard Hanson (1896 – 1981)

Robert Ward, Bernard Stambler [after Arthur Miller]: I counted myself so very plain… God does not need my name (The Crucible). Chester Ludgin, Frances Bible, John Macurdy, Norman Kelley, Eunice Alberts, Jack De Lon, Emerson Buckley, New York City Opera Orchestra [1962]

Robert Ward (1917 – 2013)
Inge Borkh as (Verdi’s) Lady Macbeth

Ernest Bloch, Edmond Fleg [after William Shakespeare]: Encore une tache (Macbeth). Inge Borkh, Pierre Colombo, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande [live Génève 10.XI.68]

Ernest Bloch (1880 – 1959)
Willem Pijper (1894 – 1947)

Willem Pijper, Emmy van Lokhorst [after Martinus Nihjoff: Ik doe hier ni mijn laatste kleeren aan [Dressing Scene] (Halewijn). Elisabeth Lugt, Martha van Kerkhof, Felix de Nobel, Utrecht Symphony Orchestra [live Hilversum 14.IX.62]

Elisabeth Lugt
Harry Clarke’s horrific 1919 illustration from the Poe short story

Claude Debussy, libretto after Edgar Allan Poe, completed and orchestrated Robert Orledge: Je sais qu’elle est trop frêle (La Chute de la Maison Usher). William Dazeley, Eugene Villanueva, Christoph-Mathias Mueller, Göttinger Symphonie Orchester [live Göttingen 11.XII.2013]

Ersan Mondtag’s 2022 production of Antikrist at the Deutsche Oper Berlin

Rued Langgaard: Liv er sort, smerte og pine (Antikrist). Susanne Resmark, Thomas Dausgaard, Danish National Symphony Orchestra [2002]

Susanne Resmark

Alfred Schnittke, text from Historia von D. Johann Fausten [anonymous, published by Johannes Spies]: Und es geschah (Faust Cantata). Iva Bittová, Peter Vrabel, Hradec Kralove Philharmonic, Prague Philharmonic Choir [live Hradec Kralove 2008]

Alfred Schnittke (1934 – 1998)

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