Herbert: Natoma

Day 203

Victor Herbert Natoma (extracts)

Various performers

I wanted to end this look at nationalist operas by listening to a late 19th/early 20th century American opera. Somewhat to my surprise I was unable to find a complete recording of any opera of the pre First World War generation anywhere on any of the music libraries. So I had to make do with a selection of extracts from Victor Herbert's opera Natoma which somebody put together on line from a variety of sources - including private recordings, off-air videos, historical vocal recordings, a medley of brief excepts and even piano roll recordings. It was of course impossible to make a balanced judgement of the work from these scraps but there was enough to make an impression. Victor Herbert is know today, if he is still remembered at all, for some light operas and musical comedies but he did write two serious operas - this was was performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1911 and was a resounding flop.  It is set in California in the 1820 and takes what is now a questionable view of American history, with praise for Columbus as the 'discoverer' of American and a very patronising view of Native Americans.

The 'Indian' music now seems Kitch and reminded me of the sort of thing one might have heard on the soundtrack of a Walt Disney film set in the Wild West, but some of the other music, particularly the prelude to Act 3, was very powerful. It was very much in the mainstream European tradition with clearly influences of French Opera and Puccini. It is a very long way from Babes in Toyland, which was made into a film by Laurel and Hardy.

The subject matter of the opera would make it unperformable nowadays, but I would like to have the opportunity to hear the whole thing - and indeed some of the other early American operas - given that so many long-forgotten operas have now been recorded is really is odd that this American repertory has simply vanished completely.

This is the end of this exploration of nationalist opera. In a short time I have managed to cover

• Denmark
• Poland
• Georgia
• Czechoslovakia
• Greece
• Russia
• Hungary
• The USA

There are plenty of other traditions to cover and I will return to this theme of Nationalist opera later in this project. But now for a complete change. For the next few days I will be exploring some composers of Tudor church music.