Perhaps it all came too easily for Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957). When the composer was barely out of short trousers, Mahler proclaimed him a genius. So did Richard Strauss. Puccini called him “the greatest hope of modern German music”. For a long time, though, Korngold got no respect.
It’s Hitler’s fault. A Jew who called Vienna home, Korngold was stranded in the US when Germany annexed Austria in 1938. He settled in California and composed sumptuous scores for swashbuckling movies including The Sea Hawk and The Adventures of Robin Hood, which earned him an Oscar but made him an Untouchable among the European musical cognoscenti. They considered film music beneath them, even when it was as clever and well-written as Korngold’s.
He has enjoyed a revival in recent years, but the nagging question remains: was he an underappreciated genius or an unfulfilled talent who betrayed his gifts by relocating to Hollywood?
“It has to be the former,” says Frances Moore, who directs the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra’s one-off July 8 performance of Korngold’s opera Die Tote Stadt. “There’s no denying he was an extraordinary composer.”
Moore is one of our own great underappreciated talents. A finalist in the 2007 Lexus Song Quest (Moore describes herself as a “recovering singer”), she possesses Masters’ degrees in both musicology and theatre arts and won a Fulbright scholarship to study in New York. She formed her own opera company, Unstuck Opera, while still in her 20s. She was a staffer at the APO and now works for NZ Opera, but has undertaken this production as a freelancer.
“There is snobbery around film music, though less so now – but the colour, the melody, it’s all so lush and intoxicating. His Romantic approach went out of style for a bit, but it’s being reclaimed.”
Since its 1920 premiere, Die Tote Stadt has just about maintained a fingertip hold on the musical consciousness, thanks to the beautiful soprano aria Marietta’s Lied, but this is the first time the opera has been performed here. It’s not easy to stage. It’s a tough sing for the leads and requires a huge orchestra, and although it’s being performed in Auckland in stripped-back concert form, that creates its own difficulties.
“A traditional opera has sets and costumes and lighting design to build a world for people to see,” Moore says. “[Operas in concert] require an audience to live more in its own imaginative world.”
Although a lot of Die Tote Stadt’s drama already happens in the characters’ heads, Moore thinks Korngold’s musical picture painting will help.
“There’s so much detail and specificity in the music. In a way, it’s a natural fit for an opera-in-concert approach, where less is more.”
