Die Voegel vergessen?

Has Die Voegel been unfairly forgotten in the 2005 festival? I've commented on the odd lack of chatter surrounding this respected production, which got third billing in the NYT's June 6th review of Spoleto operas. I've got a theory as to why, but I really don't know.

Now comes this e-mail from C of C English professor Julia Eichelberger, an opera fan with no connection to Die Voegel:

Why can I find almost no mention of Die Vögel on your otherwise cool site? After searching for it awhile, I even went back to the Spoleto program to see if it had closed already. No--there is still another performance on June 11th, and there are tickets available. A friend told me that at the performance he saw last week, the house was only two-thirds full. Die Vögel has not generated the controversy that Giovanni and Mabou Mines Dollhouse have (although I think the wedding dance of the dove and the pigeon would get at least a PG-13 rating) but I think it deserves further attention than it's getting. It has just about everything any opera lover could want, and much to delight audiences who think they don't care for opera. Visually, it's a grand spectacle, the score is lovely (why has it never been performed stateside?), the singers are superb, the anti-war message heartbreakingly relevant. Romantic longing and idealism are exactly suited to the outsized scale of an opera, and the grandeur of this production could make an idealist out of the most cynical of audiences, at least for as long as the Nightingale is singing.
--Julia Eichelberger

My observation: The best way to get people talking about the thing you want to talk about is to get out there and start talking, and that is, quite literally, why this blog is here.

Comments

[Jim]

In a time when opera companies are desperate to program works that a) aren't the same 20 ones (Boheme, Carmen, Traviata etc.) or b) noisy and modern and difficult (Wozzeck, anything by Birtwistle), Die Vogel should be programmed all over the place. I've not seen a performance of it, but the recording on Decca is glorious, revealing a beautiful, well-constructed opera that is tuneful, memorable and says something. It *is* a problem: how to get people to come to an opera that is unknown even among opera fans, but one that, if they go, they'd likely really enjoy? I have no solutions other than a big outreach effort, but it's worth it.

Other beautiful, tuneful operas that people would love if they only got a chance to hear them:

Korngold: Die Tote Stadt
Schreker: Der Ferne Klang
Schreker: Die Gezeichneten
Schreker: Der Schatzgraber
Zemlinsky: Der Zwerg
Respighi: Campana Sumersa
Respighi: Flammen
Franchetti: Cristoforo Columbo
Pfitzner: Palestrina

There's dozen of others that are viable. Hopefully, someone taped the Die Vogel so that it'll circulate on the live opera performance boards.