Ugly Duckling

Nice work on Der Freischütz (1821), Carl Maria von Weber, so let’s see what else the German Romantic composer has for us. Oberon (1826) is second-most-famous, and was last of his three big operas, but before we get to Oberon, we’d better investigate Euryanthe (1823), next to last.

Euryanthe, because I cannot find a video of the earlier ones: Silvana (1810), Abu Hassan (1811), or Die Drei Pintos (1821), at least not with English. Another day, perhaps.

Right off the downbeat, we read that Euryanthe was not very popular in its day, or since then, either. Let’s figure out why. A Wikipedia contributor blames the librettist, Helmina von Chézy, but I don’t. I will explain my thinking.

This is Extremely Hard to Find

CueTV.online has a 2018 Euryanthe from Vienna’s MusikTheater an der Wien, which is one of the two smaller opera houses in the city.

• Vienna State Opera is the big one, with an enormous and respected annual program.

• Vienna Volksoper is the other smaller one. Its current schedule shows musicals, plus Fledermaus.

• Vienna’s Burgtheater does not seem to stage operas these days.

In spite of the extremely modern look of the sets and costuming in Vienna, we dive into Euryanthe, but it is challenging, because the English subtitles are offset from the video by about 5 seconds. It’s surprisingly difficult to put the two together in your head, because you can’t always tell who is speaking those words.

Also, this has been translated into Old English, not what I want to read.

Medici.tv has a recording of the exact same production, and here the English titles are aligned with the voices, but it takes only a few minutes for this King James version to wear on the nerves.

“In truth, thou may’st squander unconcerned thy wealth.”

“Already I breathe freer. What replyest?”

“Wert thou the pearl of knights, and I an abject serf, I’d swear to thee, the love of thy betrothed I’d win for me.”

Whose idea was this? No one in the world talks like this anymore. A computer program must have translated the German, and I don’t have a decoder.

Also, this king looks like an insurance salesman, and not someone who is going to be able to settle any death feuds in Act 3.

Operavision.eu also has the same production, but I am tired of this one. So let’s give up on Vienna for now.

On YouTube, there is a recording from the Bard Summerscape Opera (Annandale, NY) from 2014, and that will have to do, even though it breaks often for video commercials, and this Adolar (William Burden) has a massive brace on his right leg (which is not part of Von Weber’s story). His lady Euryanthe (Ellie Dehn) does not care that Adolar hobbles throughout the performance.

So we’re back on track.

In this production, everyone is dressed in a traditional way, and the king (Peter Volpe) looks like someone to reckon with. This Lysiart (Ryan Kuster) certainly fits as a dashing lady-killer who is going to win any gamble he takes, so he would reasonably end up with Eglantine (Wendy Bryn Harmer, a living doll).

Also, the music is terrific! Von Weber is fun to listen to, and the very grand music goes along with the serious, combative plot.

This Could Never Happen

Immediately in Scene 1, things start to go off the rails for young Euryanthe and her fiancé, and for me. Realistically, I wonder whether two German noblemen would make a bet on the faithfulness of one of the women, Così fan tutte -style. Certainly, Mozart made big fun of the concept 33 years earlier, but there, the guys were just screwing around with each other, and each other’s girls.

Here, what they have up for collateral, for this pointless bet, is everything they own. Really? Come on, German noblemen! Your castle, your lands, your title, everything? Yes, that’s the bet. You noblemen are nuts.

Neither Could This

Then, the real weirdness starts. Euryanthe is engaged, we’ve got that, and her guy is Adolar. As stated, Adolar is a mope, because he’s into this crazy bet (against his buddy Lysiart).

Nevertheless, a castle girl named Eglantine wants to steal Adolar away from Euryanthe, just before the wedding, and she whips up a blackmail plan, and it works like this: Eglantine tricks Euryanthe into sharing the secret of a mysterious key. Now Eglantine’s got Euryanthe trapped!

She does?

Yes, because fiancé Adolar has told fiancée Euryanthe never, never to reveal the secret of the mysterious key! Euryanthe sees her mistake, and breaks down in tears, because this secret key thing is so important to Adolar.

You know, lots of operas have goofy, unrealistic plots, and they are fine anyway, but this one is so highly contrived that it challenges the imagination. At this point in the show, if it weren’t for the sweeping French horns and all, I would have trouble staying seated, because to me, it doesn’t matter what happens next. This is just not convincing me. Disney movie, maybe. German Romanticism, no.

And Now It’s a Ghost Story

Now it’s time for a bit of plot complexity, and this one will send you out for more popcorn, and you might stay out there, making phone calls or doing your email.

This is the part about Emma and Udo. No, wait, hold on; this part is interesting, if not sane.

Emma is Adolar’s sister, and she is mostly dead already. She died because her man Udo was killed in a war, and she was so bereft that she drank poison out of a ring. (On the screen, they don’t show what kind of ring can hold a fatal dose of poison, so let’s not worry about that.) So, she’s in a crypt under the living room floor, and Adolar uses the mysterious key to go down there and check on his dead sister periodically. That is the secret! Euryanthe, by NO means should you tell anyone that I am checking on my dead sister periodically!

The fact is, Adolar does not really need to use the key and go down into the crypt to check, because Emma is a ghost now. (Remember, “mostly dead”?) She has no singing role, but she shows up in the castle occasionally, and frankly, this is a very good effect on the stage at Bard Summerscape Opera. Emma is creepy.

If you think this is ridiculous, you may need to be reminded that von Weber did not get drunk and make this up, and neither did Helmina von Chézy. Definitely not; there is a lot of credibility in this narrative, because the story is based on a French novel, and that novel is called:

“L'Histoire du très-noble et chevalereux prince Gérard, comte de Nevers et la très-virtueuse et très chaste princesse Euriant de Savoye, sa mye”.

Wait, the Ghost Needs What?

One more important plot point will now be explained, and as an editorial note, I will simply state, in its defense, that this new plot point is even more bonkers than any of the others.

Keep in mind that all this time, von Weber’s music is wonderful. It really is fun to listen to, in spite of the various plot points.

Why, we are wondering, does Emma’s ghost wander around scaring the pants off the audience? This is because her soul cannot rest “until innocent tears have fallen on the ring and fidelity has sought salvation for a murderer”.

Yes, that’s the event we’re waiting for. Then, when that happens, Emma can go to bed.

I told you so.

I’m Making a Flowchart

So now, Eglantine has the secret, and she knows how to get into the crypt with the mysterious key, and she plans to expose Euryanthe’s weak-willed spilling of that secret, thus winning Adolar away from Euryanthe. She thinks that will work.

Remember back at the beginning, when Adolar bet his fortune on the fidelity of Euryanthe, whom he loves? This is the point where that story line reappears, and it’s weakly interesting, except we’re very far into Brothers Grimm territory now, with this tale.

That guy’s name, again, is Lysiart, and he’s starting to realize he’s not making any headway with Euryanthe, and as a result, he might lose everything he owns to Euryanthe’s guy Adolar. Now, even Lysiart thinks it is a foolish bet.

Solution: He teams up with sneaky Eglantine, because if he can just hold up the secret ring and the mysterious key, this will prove that he’s been intimate with Euryanthe, since she’s supposed to be the only person who knows about these things (aside from Adolar, who is Emma’s brother).

He says “Eglantine, let me show everybody that ring and that key, because then I will win the bet, become twice as wealthy, and marry you, and we will evict foolish Euryanthe and half-lame Adolar.”

And it works. Absolutely no one believes Euryanthe when she protests; they strip her on the stage and banish her to the wilderness, alone. Adolar leaves and gets a job at a gas station or something.

Nobody cares about Emma the ghost anymore.

Now, Just Undo All of That

Finally, the big finale, and it makes no more sense than any of the other scenes.

But focus on the sounds instead of the story, because, nearly 3 hours into this show, von Weber is still putting out delightful and complex music. In fact, there are a number of striking arias and duets in this opera, and a male/female chorus that supports the whole thing nicely.

But, to be complete, here we go.

Banished and rejected, Euryanthe is dying in the forest, but when hunters find her, they suddenly believe that she has been faithful to Adolar, and that wealthy Lysiart and duplicitous Eglantine are guilty as sin. The king agrees.

Everything is reversed, and the castle and all it contains (including Emma’s ghost) go back to Adolar. Euryanthe sheds a few innocent tears on the secret ring, and that does the trick! Finally, Emma joins Udo in death.

The end!

It’s Not Helmina’s Story

So that is nuts, and hard to follow, but again: the music.

Here, we remember all those jokes about how opera stories are so simplistic and undeveloped. But this one is quite a page-turner, at least for complexity. So this is what happens when you use a very convoluted story for an opera, instead of for a video game.

Blame seems to have been historically placed on Helmina von Chézy, the librettist, but when I read her bizarre biographical information, I was sympathetic. She was a mean person, perhaps, but I’m remembering that she did not invent this foolish sequence of events. You might assume the problems are Helmina’s fault, but since she based the libretto for Euryanthe on “L'Histoire du très-noble et chevalereux prince Gérard, comte de Nevers et la très-virtueuse et très chaste princesse Euriant de Savoye, sa mye”, it’s not.

I have not read the source novel (or even gotten all the way through the title, to tell you the truth), but it seems to me that the blame for this fiasco lies with whoever wrote that novel. Or perhaps blame should be shared between von Weber and von Chézy together, because they chose to make an opera out of it.

Therefore, one useful approach might be to use this Bard video, or the Vienna video, and watch it with the subtitles turned off. That way, you would get the exquisite, memorable music, but you would not be troubled by the confusing French story (or the problematic Anglo-Saxon subtitles).

Next, Oberon, and then Schubert

Finally, the notes for Euryanthe say that it is one of the first German operas to present continuous singing, not interrupted by straight spoken language (gesprocheneworte), “just like Schubert's lesser-known Alfonso und Estrella”.

What? Franz Schubert wrote an opera? Yes! About a dozen of them.

This is news to me. Let’s go find one.