Spontini: Agnes von Hohenstaufen

Day 335

Spontini: Agnes von Hohenstaufen

Soloists

Maggio Musicale Florence

Vittorio Gui

My enthusiasm for 19th Century French opera, which I have alluded to several times in this notes, can be traced back to the performance of Spontini's La Vestale by the Nottingham University Opera Group in 1976. I sang in the chorus. The idiom, halfway between the classical and romantic traditions, was difficult to  fully appreciate at the time, but the work made a strong impression nonetheless and left with me with a real interest to hear more Spontini and indeed 19th century French opera. I've got to know the two other big French Spontini Operas, Olympie and Fernand Cortez, but although I had heard a few extracts from it I had never listened to the whole of Agnes von Hohenstaufen. This was Spontini's last opera and was written in Germany where he settled for the last part of his life. He had become rather embittered at the eclipse of his style in favour of the more overtly Romantic style exemplified in Der Freischutz.

The Opera was set to a German text but this performance is in Italian (the German version has never been recorded). The recording I listened to was an old off-air performance from the 1950s. It was very muddy in places with lots of stage noise and applause in odd places (presumably in response to what was going on on stage) but enough of the music shone through to enable me to appreciate the piece.

There is a famous anecdote (I've never been able to track it down to its original source and it is probably apocrophal) which concerns a man who was going deaf. He went to his doctor who suggested that they go together to a performance of Fernand Cortez as the shock of noise of the opera might unblock his ears. At the end of the performance he turned to his doctor and said 'it worked - I can hear' only to find his doctor looking back blankly at him: the noise had damaged his eardrums and he was no longer able to hear!'

That reputation for loudness certainly comes through in this opera - the big set pieces are on an impressive scale with some extremely exciting orchestral and vocal effects. But the lyrical side of Spontini is also much in evidence, particularly in some of the duets and ensembles. At his best he really was a force to be reckoned with and you can understand why Berlioz, for example, was so strong an advocate for his music.

But there are weaknesses. Sometime the music does fall into triviality and 'rum-ti-tum'. But most frustrating is Spontini's inability to transition from one section to another. Typically we get and ending and then the orchestra simply lays down another chord in a new key and off we go again. I've commented before on this being a common problem in early and mid 19th century French opera. It took French opera composers a long time before they had really mastered the art of transition.

But this fault, irritating as it is, shouldn't be allowed to get in the way of an appreciation of Spontini's achievement as a major contributor to operatic history. On any level this was an impressive piece. I do hope that Bru Zane take it up in its series of opera recordings - they have already done La Vestale and Olympie . It would be really good to hear a studio performance in a modern recording so that you can appreciate all of the subtleties in the score.