Some once-popular artists simply drift into obscurity. Others have obscurity thrust upon them. The German composer Walter Braunfels is one of the latter. Well known, popular, and highly thought of in the period between the two World Wars, he was unceremoniously stripped of his teaching positions and booted in to internal exile by the Nazi government in part because he was a half Jewish convert to Catholicism and in part because he had roundly snubbed the Nazi Party when it sought to have him write a party anthem in the 1920s. At war's end Braunfels found that while he was out the musical world had largely passed him by, embracing serialism and electronic experimentation and disdaining those who still adhered as he did to the more melodic models of The Two Richards, Wagner and Strauss.
For this season's installment of conductor James Conlon's ongoing "Recovered Voices" initiative, devoted to the rediscovery of composers whose creative lives were in one way or another opposed or obstructed by the Nazi regime, Los Angeles Opera has revived Braunfels' Die Vögel (The Birds). Written in the period before and after World War I, in which Braunfels served and from which he returned in a more dour and depressed frame of mind than he had left, Die Vögel was an immense success when it premiered in 1920, performed some 50 times in Munich and staged in many another opera house across Europe. Fame is fleeting, however, and Die Vögel fell from the repertoire quickly once Braunfels was denounced with other composers of degenerate, "entartete musik" in 1933. While his musical career never really recovered, Braunfels at least was still alive at the end of the war, unlike many others on that list.
Although it strays far from the original, Braunfels took his inspiration from Aristophanes' satirical drama, The Birds. As in the Greek original, two humans dissatisfied with their lives in the City make their way to the kingdom of the birds. They persuade the birds to fortify themselves so that, by preventing the smoke of sacrifice from reaching Olympus, they can rule over the gods. Unlike Aristophanes, however, Braunfels does not permit the birds and their human comrades to prevail. Although warned by a visit from Prometheus, himself no stranger to the consequences of thwarting Zeus, the birds persist in their rebellion, whereupon their great city is literally blown to the four winds. Duly cowed, the birds sing a hymn to the greatness of Zeus and the humans set out to return among their own kind. As a subplot, and as an excuse for some rapturous music in Act II, Braunfels adds a romantic mystical bonding between the Nightingale and the younger more sensitive human ("Good Hope") who carries a yearning in his heart as he sets out to rejoin the world of men.
Braunfels wrote the first act of Die Vögel before the first World War and the second upon his return from the front, and it shows. Act I is a lighter, more jovial piece, closer to the mocking tone of its Athenian forebear. Act II is almost a different opera, nearly twice as long as Act I and steeped in the heavier tones of Wagner and Strauss: the curious union of Good Hope and the Nightingale is pure Tristan and the warning lecture of Prometheus echoes the ominous pronouncements of Jochanaan in Salome. Braunfels was a very talented composer in veins pioneered by others, but he was not an innovator. Die Vögel even includes an old-fashioned second-act ballet, a feature against which Wagner himself famously rebelled when the Paris Opera insisted he include one in Lohengrin.
Other than the temple architecture adopted by the birds for their city, the design of the Los Angeles Opera production is more influenced by 1920s Europe than by the Greeks. The costumes of the humans are drawn from that period, and those of the birds echo Art Deco à la Erté. Only Prometheus fails to fit in: he resembles no one more than Hagrid in the Harry Potter films. The amusing ballet, celebrating the nuptials of a pigeon and dove and the arrival of their first clutch of eggs, would fit well in a Hollywood spectacle of the same era. Other than the dance episodes, the staging is relatively static. This may be a matter of safety and necessity, since the production shares the extremely steep raked stage being used for the LA Opera Ring and greater movement would likely risk the limbs and necks of the singers.
The review excerpts running in the print ads for Die Vögel all single out Conlon and the orchestra for praise, which is only right. In his chosen style, Braunfels devised large swaths of top drawer late Romantic music, and the Opera orchestra plays it as well, I think, as it can be played. The big Act II set pieces in particular -- Good Hope and Nightingale's meeting by moonlight and the warning of Prometheus -- strike home. The birds' closing grovel to Zeus is a bit turgid, but that is Braunfels' fault and not the orchestra's.
Die Vögel is more deserving of its obscurity than Zemlinsky's The Dwarf (Der Zwerg), which was revived in last season's "Recovered Voices" production, but it does not deserve to disappear altogether. Musically, it has genuine merit and the LA Opera production demonstrates that it warrants at least occasional revival for reasons that go beyond historical curiosity.
Two performances remain -- April 23 and 26 -- and there are numerous tickets available at half-price through Los Angeles Opera itself (here) or through the Goldstar service (here), so anyone with even a remote fondness for German high Romantic opera, or for singing birds, should give it a go. Why, with those half-price offers, it's cheaper than a trip to Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room!
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Photos: Robert Millard, via Los Angeles Opera.
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