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Monday 3 November 2008 at 7.30pm
Scenes from Viennese Operettas
Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble
Marc Minkowski conductor
Angelika Kirchschlager mezzo-soprano
Simon Keenlyside baritone
Johann Strauss II Ägyptischer Marsch, Op. 335
Suppé Boccaccio – Hab’ ich nur deine Liebe; Mia bella fiorentina
Lehár Eva – Zwanzinette
Kálmán Das Veilchen von Montmartre – Heut’ Nacht hab’ich geträumt von dir
Johann Strauss II Die Tänzerin Fanny Elssler – Draussen in Sievering blüht schon der Flieder
Lehár Gold und Silber, Op. 79
INTERVAL 20 minutes
Johann Strauss II Die Fledermaus – Overture
Lehár Giuditta – Meine Lippen, die küssen so heiss
Kálmán Die Zirkusprinzessin – Wieder hinaus ins strahlende Licht
Offenbach Abendblätter
Lehár Zigeunerliebe – Nur die Liebe macht uns jung
Kálmán Die Csardasfürstin – Weisst du es noch
The first half of tonight’s performance will last c45 minutes; and the second half c50 minutes; the concert will end at
approximately 9.30pm.
Tonight’s artists will be signing CDs on the ground-floor foyer, outside Farringdons, after the performance.
Barbican Hall
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Notes
Scenes from Viennese Operettas
Christopher Cook
If the Hohenzollerns had Richard Wagner to proclaim
their new-made Reich with its ‘holy German art’ in the
final pages of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, then their
Hapsburg neighbours in Vienna had the Strausses and
Franz Lehár in Wiener Blut and The Merry Widow.
Wiener Blut is usually translated as ‘The Spirit of Vienna’,
blood perhaps being a shade too close for Anglo-Saxon
comfort to Bismarck’s promise of ‘blood and iron’ to
forge a united Germany on the anvil of Prussian political
ambition. And if there is more than a hint of ‘race’ in the
word too, that is surely the point. Who remembers now
that there was – and still is – a Race Gallery in Vienna’s
Natural History Museum? The Viennese were a polyglot
mixture of Austrian Germans, Slovenes, Poles, Czechs,
Slovaks, Ruthenians, Romanians, Serbs, Croats, Jews and
Magyars from Hungary. It was Roman Catholic,
Protestant, Eastern Orthodox and Muslim. Vienna, the
city of Freud and Mahler, Adolf Loos and the Secession,
which, together with Paris, arguably invented the
modernist 20th century, was an ‘idea’ quite as much as
an actual place on a map. It was capital of an empire
that contained more European peoples from East and
West and spoke more European languages than any
other state. And since the great political compromise of
1867, which had created the joint kingdom of AustriaHungary, a potentially catastrophic political fault-line ran
through the heart of the whole venture.
So how to make one out of so many and how to
Austrianise Hungary? Culturally speaking that’s where
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operetta comes in. In the great works of the ‘Golden
Age’, when the younger Johann Strauss was master of
3/4 time and then afterwards during the so-called ‘Silver
Age’, when Lehár ruled the stage of the Theater an der
Wien, Hungarian countesses mixed with gypsy bands,
Pontevedrian widows from the imagined Balkans were as
Viennese as Eisenstein and Roselinde, Student Princes
rubbed shoulders with Counts of Luxembourg. Operetta
reconciled the irreconcilable; on stage, at least, the
Austro-Hungarian Empire was more than just a
geographical accident. And if you couldn’t match heimat
and herz, then there was always the other ‘abroad’
beyond the Austro-Hungarian frontier. A mittelEuropäische version of busying ‘giddy minds with
foreign’ travels.
It was, of course, a foreigner born in Cologne who
invented operetta and made it French during the Second
Empire. Vienna soon eagerly claimed the German
Jacques Offenbach as their own, and we’re to hear
Offenbach’s waltz Abendblätter, ‘Evening Papers’ in the
second half of this evening’s concert in which the
composer tips his musical hat towards the Germanspeaking world. (It was Johann Strauss II who composed
Morgenblatter, ‘Morning Papers’ in 1863.) While
Offenbach’s music may have set Viennese toes tapping,
the master’s social satire was several steps away from
anything truly Austrian. And then there was the question
of the royalties.Offenbach was expensive; and so, the
story goes, Johann Strauss II, a genius at writing dance
music, was persuaded to lend his music to a theatre
Notes
piece, Indigo and the Forty Thieves. It was 1870; just three
years after the Great Political Compromise, the gypsy
barons and the Hungarian countesses were ready and
waiting in the wings to conquer Vienna.
Viennese operetta is built from waltzes and glued
together with dreams of exotic otherness. If it isn’t gypsies
then it’s Europe’s favourite 19th-century pastime,
armchair travel: expeditions to the fabled East and
golden West, to the southern sun and the world’s most
glamorous cities; around the world in 80 days but
journeys that never require you to leave home. Long
before he took to the stage Johann Strauss II was a
seasoned armchair tour guide. He composed his
Egyptian March in 1869 to commemorate the opening of
the Suez Canal, and it had its first Viennese outing in
December of that year in the burlesque Into Egypt.
Strauss writes his own version of Egypt into the music.
Distant woodwind play a suitably exotic ‘oriental’ melody
at the start and when we get to the march proper it
repeats to a distinctly Arab step. Then, before the march
is given a final whirl around the parade-ground, a
wordless chorus, slipping between major and minor
melodies, seem to float us to the banks of the Nile itself.
Exactly two years later when Aida was given its premiere
at the Khedive’s Opera House in Cairo, Verdi’s chorus of
sinister priests also sang invisibly by the Nile.
It was Franz von Suppé who had first tried to beat
Offenbach at his own game in Vienna – and failed.
Das Pensionat took the audience to Spain but not
enough were willing to travel. However, they were only
too pleased to buy a ticket for Boccaccio and go south to
Italy, to Florence where Suppé’s eponymous hero is
chasing Fiametta, a grocer’s daughter who is also the
object of attention of Pietro, Prince of Palermo. For
reasons that only make sense in an operetta Boccaccio –
a role that was written for a tenor, premiered by a
soprano, recorded by a baritone, and sometimes sung
by a mezzo-soprano – is forced to disguise himself as a
blind beggar! Nevertheless, he does get two delicious
duets for his pains: ‘Hab’ ich nur deine Liebe’, which
begins as an aria for Fiametta, and ‘Florenz hat schöne
Frauen’ (‘Mia bella fiorentina’).
Nothing quite became Franz Lehár like his greatest
success, The Merry Widow. It made him a household
name throughout Europe and on both sides of the
Atlantic. It is said to have played in five separate theatres
in Buenos Aires at the same time and the costumes
designed for Lily Elsie for the Widow’s British premiere at
Daly’s Theatre in 1908 inspired an entire London fashion
look: one hat with feathers, in particular, took the town by
storm. In plot terms The Merry Widow squares a cultural
circle, it’s all about Pontrevedrian politics, also known as
the Balkans, but it takes place in Paris, the centre of the
universe as far as pleasure was concerned at the
beginning of the 20th century. Lehár returned to Paris six
years after the Widow for an operetta called Eva,
although strictly speaking it’s only in Act 3 that the opera
crosses the border from Belgium to France. Before that
we’ve been busy in a glassworks in Brussels in the
3
Notes
company of Eva, the foster daughter of one of the
workers, who falls for the factory boss’s son. The setting
may be modern industrial, but the music is anything but
proletarian and the orchestration of an instrumental
number such as ‘Zwanzinette’ as accomplished as ever.
You soon understand why those master-orchestrators
Puccini and Richard Strauss so admired Lehár’s work.
does so well. A feeling that you’ve somehow just missed
the perfect party. Then there’s the piano, adding a jazzy
hint of transatlantic chic.
It’s European style that Johann Strauss II celebrated in
Die Tänzerin Fanny Elssler, who was one of the most
admired dancers of the first half of the 19th century. Ballet
is not perhaps an ideal subject for musical theatre, but as
Emmerich Kálmán belongs to the same Silver Age of
always Strauss gives his young heroine a beguiling
Viennese operetta as Franz Lehár, despite the fact that
number. And what does it also celebrate? Lilac time in a
neither of them was Austrian in the strictest sense. Kálmán Viennese suburb that grew like topsy in the 19th century.
was Hungarian, born into a Jewish family in Siófok, on
If ‘Draussen im Sievering blüht schon der Flieder’ bears
the southern shore of Lake Balaton. Lehár’s family came more than a passing resemblance to the music for
Die Fledermaus, is that really such a bad thing?
from the Sudetenland, though he was born in the
northern part of Komárom in Hungary where his father
Waltzes thread through every Viennese operetta, indeed
was a bandmaster serving in an infantry regiment in the
it’s the waltz that seems to stand for Vienna itself. (For the
Austro-Hungarian Army. And if Lehár couldn’t resist
cultural aspiration to be echt Viennese too, perhaps.) So
Paris, nor could Kálmán. There’s a Puccini link too.
when Ralph Benatzky failed to write a waltz for White
Kálmán’s 1930 Parisian operetta Das Veilchen von
Horse Inn, the producers had no compunction in turning
Montmartre is a cousin once removed to La bohème with
to another composer Robert Stolz and commissioning a
a painter and a composer living in a Paris garret. (No
thumping big waltz song. The title says it all – My Love
wonder that this was such a popular work in the Soviet
Song must be a Waltz. As a form, the waltz predates
Union – artist workers fighting cultural Capitalism was
operetta; indeed Johann Strauss II made his name
evidently very much to the taste of the comrades).
writing dance music long before he was coaxed onto the
Abandoned by Ninon, their regular model, the artists
stage. And his successors were happy, too, to write
take up with Violetta, the ‘Violet of Monmartre’ who, of
waltzes that had a life of their own outside the theatre.
course, soon steals the painter’s heart. As always in
Gold und Silber is perhaps the best-known of Franz
operetta, the path of true love doesn’t run quite smoothly
Lehár’s waltzes and it was composed for Princess
and before long Ninon is back on the scene. Who really
Metternich’s ‘Gold and Silver’ Ball in January 1902.
cares, particularly when Kálmán gives his painter the
best-known music in the piece, ‘Heut’ nacht hab’ich
INTERVAL 20 minutes
geträumt von Dir’, tinged with that wistful regret that he
4
Notes
Die Fledermaus, which, along with The Merry Widow, is
the only operetta to have stayed in the general repertoire,
is, as Karl Dietrich Gräwe has written, ‘universally
regarded as the Austrian operetta in excelsis’. It received
its first performance at the Theater an der Wien in 1874
and within six years had been given in some 170
German-speaking theatres and, by 1890, had entered
that holy of holies: the Vienna Imperial Opera. For all its
plot and counterplot, the half-truths and downright lies
that its bourgeois cast tells each other in pursuit of
personal pleasure, the heart of the piece is Prince
Orlovsky’s masked ball. A wealthy Maecenas visiting the
city – a would-be Viennese perhaps – presides over a
party in which no one is as they appear. A triumph of
deception in which, to take just one example, the heroine
Rosalinde, Viennese down to her silk slippers, pretends to
he Hungarian and sings a csárdás, a traditional dance
from Hungary that was popularised by Roma bands
right across the south eastern parts of the AustroHungarian Empire. Johann Strauss and his librettists
neatly dramatise the political fault-line rumbling under
the Austro-Hungarian Empire: that national identity is
simply something that you can put on and take off at will.
With their masks up, everyone is really Austrian. The
sparkling Overture to the piece gives no hint of what will
happen when the masks drop after those fatal pistol shots
in Sarajevo in August 1914. Why should it? This is an
invitation to a fantasy.
of all its subject nations and peoples. Vienna became an
Imperial city without an empire or an emperor. No need
now to glue the whole thing together with operetta. The
choice for the composer and his librettists was either
nostalgia for what had been lost – all those barons,
gypsies, princesses and so on – or to face up to a brave
new world. So Franz Lehár wrote a new kind of operetta
about shop girls and impoverished young men. Then in
the early 1930s came a commission from the Vienna
State Opera. And it was goodbye to the Viennese
everyday and time to travel again, not to Paris now but to
Sicily and to Libya in the company of Giuditta who leaves
her husband to follow Octavio, an army officer, to Africa.
She becomes a dancer; he deserts his regiment and ends
up playing piano in a restaurant where the two meet
again when she is dining with a new admirer. No
triumphant reunion is allowed now; this is a harder world
than it was when widows went to Paris and champagne
eased everyone’s pain. As Octavio doodles at the piano
a waiter turns off the restaurant lights.
Giuditta is Lehár’s most substantial work. And if the tenor
Richard Tauber – perhaps the best-known of Lehár’s
collaborators – created the role of Octavio at the
premiere in 1934, it’s Giuditta’s ‘Meine Lippen, die küssen
so heiss’ that we hear most often now. It’s a great big
number, performed by the eponymous heroine in a
nightclub in North Africa. Lehár had hoped to dedicate
Giudetta to Mussolini, but the Italian dictator declined the
The Austro-Hungarian Empire entirely disappeared after honour. In Fascist Italy it was unthinkable that an Italian
the Great War. When the Allies had redesigned the map officer would desert his regiment for a woman!
of Europe all that remained was the rump, Austria shorn
5
Notes
After Austro-Hungary melted away into the history books
it was operetta business as usual for Kálmán. Not the
music, which has an undeniably modern feel to it, more
sour than sweet and with unmistakable American
accents. It’s the plots that behave as if nothing had really
happened to old Europe. So in Die Zirkusprinzessin, first
performed at Theater an der Wien in Vienna in March
1926, a mysterious ‘Mr X’, a fearless circus performer, is
paid by a disappointed suitor of Princess Fedora Palinska
to pose as a nobleman and to marry her. Of course it
transpires that ‘Mr X’ is the disinherited nephew of a
deceased prince, so everything turns out all right. ‘Mr X’s’
aria ‘Wieder hinaus ins strahlende Licht ‘comes in the
First Act when, in declaring his love for Fedora, he
suggests that they have already met, and, listening to the
melody, who can doubt that it must have been
somewhere in Hungary. And yet the orchestration
suggests a venue hard by Culver City. And that, perhaps,
is what makes Kálmán’s music so distinctive.
Now for the gypsies, those perennial favourites in
operetta who live their lives on their own terms, who are
free as the wind, their happy days and nights measured
by music and love – choose your own cliché. They are an
invention of course, just as so much as so-called
Hungarian gypsy music is largely a 19th-century urban
invention with some of its roots in Jewish musical
traditions. When they appear in Viennese operetta
maybe we should understand them in two distinct ways.
As the ‘other’ to the dull, regimented and respectable
lives most of the audience led in a society dominated by
hierarchy. And also as an idealised version of what an
Austro-Hungarian could be, offering each and every
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subject a single romantic identity in this polyglot Empire,
liberated and taking pleasure where it is to be had. You
can’t do that in a full dress hussar’s uniform, in a starched
wing collar and heavy frock coat or held captive a
whalebone corset. The great novelist Joseph Roth is a
scrupulous chronicler of this kind of physical repression at
the end of the 19th century.
So Lehár’s Zigeunerliebe invites the audience to unbutton
their fantasies in the company of a young girl who
dreams of running away with the gypsies. In Kálmán’s
masterpiece, Die Csardasfürstin, on the other hand, it’s
show-business gypsies in the person of the night-club
singer, the Csárdás Princess, who promise us liberation.
Lehár’s duet ‘Nur die Liebe macht uns jung’ suggests
that it is love that will keep us young and pure and that’s
just about the message in Kálmán’s duet too, ‘Weisst du
es noch’.
Love, of course, is the engine that drives the plot of just
about every Viennese operetta. Boy meets girl meets
problems meets a happy end. Maybe this single-minded
pursuit of young love tells us something else. That in their
dreams the Viennese hoped that it might yet be possible
to turn the clock back on an Empire that was sliding into
old age and senility and which would eventually
disappear forever in 1919. Die Csardasfürstin was first
performed in 1915, one year into the Great War when
Austro-Hungary had just three years to live.
Zigeunerliebe opened in 1910, by which time the Emperor
Franz Josef – the last effective ruler of Austro-Hungary –
was already into his ninth decade.
Programme note © Christopher Cook
Texts and translations
Hab’ ich nur deine Leibe
If I only have your love
Fiametta
Hab ich nur deine Liebe,
Die Treue brauch ich nicht.
Die Liebe ist die Knospe nur,
Aus der die Treue bricht.
Drum sorge für die Knospe,
Dass sie auch schön gedeih,
Auf dass sie sich in voller Pracht
Entfalten mag, o gib drauf acht,
Ob mit, ob ohne Treu’!
Denn selbst auch ohne Treue
Hat Liebe oft entzückt,
Doch ohne Liebe Treu’ allein
Hat keinen noch beglückt!
Drum sorge für die Knospe, etc.
If I only have your love,
I don’t need faithfulness.
Love is only the bud
From which faithfulness springs.
Therefore take care of the bud
That it may prosper nicely,
And that it may bloom in full glory,
Oh, keep an eye on it,
With or without faithfullness!
Because even without faithfulness
Love has often delighted,
But only faithfulness without love
Did not make anybody happy!
Therefore take care of the bud, etc.
Boccaccio
Drum sorge für die Knospe,
Dass sie auch schön gedeih,
Auf dass sie sich in voller Pracht
Entfalten mag, o gib drauf acht,
Ob mit, ob ohne Treu’!
Therefore take care of the bud
That it may prosper nicely,
And that it may bloom in full glory,
Oh, keep an eye on it,
With or without faithfulness!
Mia bella fiorentina
My beautiful Florentine
Boccaccio
Mia bella fiorentina,
Disprezzi l’amor.
Ignori furbettina
Le piaghe del cor.
Coll’aria di contento
Derisi il mio lamento,
Non calmi i mesti gemiti
Con un sorriso almen!
E pur vedrai
Ti scorgerai
Come d’amor i palpiti
Ti stringeranno il seno.
My beautiful Florentine,
you despise love.
Little rogue, you don’t know
The heart’s wounds.
With a happy air
You deride my lament,
You don’t ease the sad sighs
At least with a smile!
However, you’ll see
You’ll realise
How love’s trembles
Press your bosom.
Fiametta
Le scalire fiorentine
No sprezzan l’amor.
The Florentine ladies
Do not despise love.
7
Texts and translations
Boccaccio
O, si!
They do!
Fiametta
Sorrisi ed occhiatine
Le sorton dal cuor.
Smiles and glances
Come from their hearts.
Boccaccio
No, no!
No, no!
Fiametta
Si pascon pel contento
Derider il lamento,
E pur nascoste lagrime
Si lasciano fuggir.
They commit themselves for their happiness
To deriding the lament,
Still secret tears
Make themselves escape.
Boccaccio
Ignoran l’amor!
They don’t know love!
Fiametta
Ah si, vedrai
Ti scorgerai.
Quando il bramato capita
D’amore san’ morire.
Ah, si la bella fiorentina
Sembra cruda, senza cuore
Un sorriso, un occhiatina,
Firulin, firulin, firulera –
L’infiamma al dolce amor.
O yes, you’ll see
You’ll realise.
When the desired [man] comes,
They know how to die of love.
Oh, if the beautiful Florentine
Seems cruel, heartless,
A smile, a glance,
Firulin, firulin, firulera –
Inflames her to sweet love.
Boccaccio
E pur ver, che la bella fiorentina
Al parer sembra cruda senza cuore
Un sospir, un languir
Una dolce occhiatina,
Firulin, firulin, etc.
Cosi mia fiorentina
Più speme no ho!
It is only too true that the beautiful Florentine
Apparently seems cruel and heartless.
A sigh, a languor
A sweet glance,
Firulin, firulin, etc.
So my Florentine
I don’t have any more hope!
Fiametta
Il cuore e la manina
Io perder non vo’!
I’m not going to lose
My heart and my little hand!
Boccaccio
Invan io dunque gemo,
Invan d’amor io fremo.
So I moan in vain,
So in vain I tremble of love.
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Texts and translations
Fiametta
Se vero son quei gemiti
Allor t’ascoltaro!
Ah si vedrai –
If these moans are sincere
Then I’ll answer your prayers!
Ah yes, you’ll see –
Boccaccio
Ti scorgerai –
You’ll realise –
Both
Che dell’amor i fremiti
Con te dividero!
That I’ll share
Love’s shudders with you!
Boccaccio
E pur ver, etc.
It is only too true, etc.
Fiametta
Ah, si la bella fiorentina, etc.
Oh, if the beautiful Florentine, etc.
Heut’ Nacht hab’ich geträumt von dir
This night I dreamt of you
Reizende Frau, im Wachen und Träumen,
mit glühenden Reimen besing ich dein Bild.
Süsseste Frau, in flammenden Bildern
vermag ich zu schildern, was ganz mich erfüllt.
Ich war verliebt sofort als ich dich nur gesehen,
Und was nun ausserdem geschah, ach, wär’ es nie
geschehen.
Charming woman, awake and in dreams,
with glowing rhymes I sing about your image.
Sweetest woman, in vibrant pictures
I am able to depict my feelings.
I fell in love the moment I saw you,
And what happened furthermore, oh, would it have
never happened …
Heut’ Nacht hab’ ich geträumt von dir, du heissgeliebte
Frau.
Du warst im Traum so lieb zu mir, du heissgeliebte Frau.
This night I dreamt of you, most passionately loved
women.
In my dreams you were so endearing to me, most
passionately loved women.
Ich sah dein Bild ganz unverhüllt, so wie ich nie dich sah. I saw your image totally unveiled, as I never saw you
before.
Küsse mich, so flehte ich, und du, du sagtest ja.
Kiss me, I pleaded, and you, you said yes.
Unter blühenden Bäumen möchte’ ich immer so träumen, Under blooming trees I’d like to have that dream forever.
Längst noch, als ich erwacht, sah ich dein Bild von heute
Already awake, I still saw your image tonight.
Nacht.
Und was ich nachts geträumt von dir,
And what I have dreamt of you tonight,
ich kann’s verraten kaum,
I can barely tell,
warum war’s nur ein Traum?
Why was it only a dream?
wenn du mir auch mit zärtlichem Bangen, trotz heissen
Verlangen,
dein Händchen entziehst
Though you with tender trembling, in spite of heated
desire,
Withdraw your little hand
9
Texts and translations
sagst du auch nein und willst mich nicht hören
willst nichts mir gewähren,
auch wenn du entfliehst,
du kommst ja doch als süsses Traumbild abends wieder
am nächsten Tag sink’ ich berauscht zu deinen Füssen
nieder.
although you say no and will not hear me,
Heut’ nacht, etc.
This night, etc.
Draussen in Sievering blüht schon der
Flieder
Out there in Sievering the lilac is already
blooming
Es dämmert schon, der Tag ist aus,
kein Mädel bleibt da gern zu Haus.
Sie schlüpft in ihr getupftes Kleid
und ist für ihren Schatz bereit.
Er fragt galant: ‘Wo willst du hin?
Was ist denn los
heut’ nacht in Wien?’
Da lächelt sie und sagt ganz still:
‘Du weisst ja was ich will.’
Already it is becoming dusk, the day has gone, no girl
likes to stay at home then.
She puts on her spotted dress
and is ready for her darling.
He asks gallantly: ‘Where do you want to go?
What’s happening in Vienna tonight?’
Draussen in Sievering blüht schon der Flieder.
Merkst du’s? Spürst du’s? Hast du’s g’seh’n?
So eine Frühlingsnacht kommt nicht bald wieder!
Heute, fühl’ ich, muss was g’scheh’n!
Draussen in Sievering blüht schon der Flieder –
lockend wie ein leises Flehn,
duftet im Mondesschein, zieht sich ins Herz hinein. –
Merkst du’s? Spürst du’s? Hast du’s g’seh’n?
Out there in Sievering the lilac is already blooming.
Have you noticed? Do you feel it? Did you see?
A night in spring like this will not return in the near future!
I feel that tonight something must happen!
Out there in Sievering the lilac is already blooming –
alluring, like a gentle imploration,
it’s fragrant in the moonlight, moves into our hearts. –
Have you noticed? Do you feel it? Did you see?
Ein kleines Haus von uns entdeckt,
wo grün ein Kranz am Tore steckt.
Ganz frei von Hast und Lärm der Zeit
schenkt dort der Wirt die Seligkeit.
Ein Gartenzaun am End’ der Welt,
der alles Glück umschlossen hält.
Dass man sich dort hinsehnt zu zwein,
das macht nicht nur der Wein.
A little house that we found,
with a green wreath on the door.
The innkeeper, free from any hurry or concern for time,
pours out bliss there.
A garden fence at the world’s end
that keeps all the happiness enclosed.
That you long to be there,
is not only due to the wine.
Draussen in Sievering, etc.
Out there in Sievering, etc.
10
although you escape,
you’ll return as a sweet vision in the evening,
and on the next day I’ll sink, besotted, to your feet.
She smiles and quietly says:
‘You know very well what I want.’
Texts and translations
Meine Lippen, die küssen so heiss
My lips’ fiery kiss
Ich weiss es selber nicht,
warum man gleich von Liebe spricht,
wenn man in meiner Nähe ist,
in meine Augen schaut und meine Hände küsst.
I don’t understand myself,
why they keep talking of love,
if they come near me,
if they look into my eyes and kiss my hand.
Ich weiss es selber nicht
warum man von dem Zauber spricht,
dem keiner widersteht, wenn er mich sieht
wenn er an mir vorüber geht.
I don’t understand myself,
Why they talk of magic,
you fight in vain, if you see me
If you pass me by.
Doch wenn das rote Licht erglüht
Zur mitternächt’gen Stund
Und alle lauschen meinem Lied,
dann wird mir klar der Grund:
But if the red light is on
In the middle of the night
And everybody listens to my song,
Then it is plain to see:
Meine Lippen, sie küssen so heiss
Meine Glieder sind schmiegsam und weiss(weich),
In den Sternen da steht es geschrieben:
Du sollst küssen, du sollst lieben!
My lips, they give so fiery a kiss,
My limbs, they are supple and white,
It is written for me in the stars:
Thou shalt kiss! Thou shalt love!
Meine Füsse sie schweben dahin,
meine Augen sie locken und glüh’n
und ich tanz’ wie im Rausch den ich weiss,
meine Lippen sie küssen so heiss!
My feet, they glide and float,
My eyes, they lure and glow,
And I dance as if entranced, ‘cause I know!
My lips give so fiery a kiss!
In meinen Adern drin,
da rollt das Blut der Tänzerin
Denn meine schöne Mutter war
Des Tanzes Knigin im gold’nen Alcazar.
In my veins
runs a dancer’s blood,
Because my beautiful mother
Was the Queen of dance in the gilded Alcazar.
Sie war so wunderschön,
ich hab’ sie oft im Traum geseh’n.
Schlug sie das Tamburin, zu wildem Tanz,
dann sah man alle Augen glühn!
She was so very beautiful,
I often saw her in my dreams,
If she beat the tamburine, to her beguiling dance
All eyes were glowing admiringly!
Sie ist in mir aufs neu erwacht,
ich hab’ das gleiche Los.
Ich tanz’ wie sie um Mitternacht
Und fühl das eine blos:
She reawakened in me,
mine is the same lot.
I dance like her at midnight
And from deep within I feel:
Meine Lippen, sie küssen so heiss!
My lips, they give so fiery a kiss!
11
Texts and translations
Wieder hinaus ins strahlende Licht
Back out again into the bright light
Wieder hinaus ins strahlende Licht,
Wieder hinaus mit frohem Gesicht!
Grell wie ein Clown das weisse Antlitz bemalt,
Zeig’ deine Kunst, denn du wirst ja bezahlt.
Bist nur ein Gaukler, nur ein Spielball des Glücks,
Zeig deine Kunst, Pierrot, zeig deine Tricks,
Tust du es recht der Menge,
winkt dir Applaus.
Wenn du versagst, lacht man dich aus.
Heute da, morgen dort, was macht es?
Heute hier, morgen fort, was macht es?
Reicht das Glück dir die Hand
Rasch greif zu, Komödiant,
Rasch Greif zu, Komödiant, greif zu.
Back out again into the bright light,
Back out again with a happy face!
The white face painted luridly like a clown,
Show your artistry, because you are paid.
You’re only a juggler, at the mercy of fate,
Show your artistry, Pierrot, show your tricks,
If you please the crowd it will applaud you.
Wenn man das Leben durchs Champagnerglas
betrachtet,
Sieht man es strahlen
Aus Goldpokalen.
Ein holdes Bild erwacht,
Für das man einst geschmachtet,
Zwei weisse Arme, ein roter Mund,
Und plötzlich leuchten auf des Glases Grund:
If you look at life through a champagne glass,
Zwei Märchenaugen, wie die Sterne so schön,
Zwei Märchenaugen, die ich einmal gesehn.
Kann nicht vergessen
Ihren strahlenden Blick,
Kann nicht ermessen
Mein verlorenes Glück.
Du Traum der Liebe,
Den ich einmal versäumt.
Du Traum des Glückes,
Den ich einmal geträumt.
Du holdes Trugbild
Meiner Lust, meiner Qual,
Du süsses Märchen:
Es war einmal.
Two fairy-tale eyes, as beautiful as the stars,
Two fairy-tale eyes that I saw once.
I cannot forget
Their beaming glance,
I cannot estimate
My vanished bliss.
You dream of love
That I once missed.
You dream of bliss,
As I once dreamed.
You lovely hallucination
My desire, my torture,
You sweet fairy-tale:
That once was.
12
If you fail they will laugh at you.
Here today, there tomorrow, does it matter?
Here today, there tomorrow, does it matter?
If Fate should deal you a lucky hand
Quickly grab it, comedian,
Quickly grab it, comedian, grab it.
You see it radiating
from golden goblets.
A lovely picture appears,
For which I once languished,
Two white arms, a red mouth,
Suddenly shine from the bottom of the glass.
Texts and translations
Nur die Liebe macht uns jung
Only love makes us young
Dragotin
Ich weiss ein Rezept, ja ganz famos,
das immer uns verjüngt.
Befolgen muss genau man’s blos,
damit die Kur gelingt.
I know a secret formula, yes, a splendid one,
that always makes us young.
All we have to do is follow it to the letter
for the cure to take effect.
Ilona
Das find’ ich brilliant,
das wär charmant,
ach nennen das Mittel Sie mir!
I find that brilliant,
that would be charming;
oh, tell me the treatment.
Dragotin
Ein tiefer sinn der liegt darin,
doch steht es auf keinem Papier.
A deep meaning is hidden in it,
But it’s not written down anywhere.
Ilona
O sprechen sie, ich bitte sehr!
Wo nimmt man denn die Jugend her?
O tell me, I beg you truly!
Where can one obtain youth?
Dragotin
Durch’s Leben da klingt eine Melodei,
so lockend, so reissend, so süss,
ein uraltes Lied aber ewig neu,
es stammt aus dem Paradies.
Es klingt durch die Welt
wie ein Freudenschrei,
so jublend, so jauchzend,beglückt.
Es singt von dem ewigen Herzensmai,
es macht alle Menschen verrückt!
A melody is heard through life,
so alluring, so captivating, so sweet;
an old song but eternally new,
it comes from paradise.
It’s heard throughout the world
like a shout of joy,
so jubilant, so exultant, so happy.
It sings of the eternal heart’s May;
It makes everyone crazy!
Nur die Liebe macht uns jung,
Nur die Liebe gibt uns Schwung,
Darum lieb’, so land Du lebst,
Su den Göttern Du Dich hebst!
Auf der Liebe süsser Spur
Blüht die ew’ge jugend nur,
Durch die selig uns machende,
Sorgen verlachende Liebeslust!
Only love makes us young,
only love gives us swing,
so love as long as you live,
and you’ll live like the gods on high!
In sweet pursuit of love
eternal youth alone blossoms,
through love’s joy, bringing us bliss,
laughing at cares and worries!
13
Texts and translations
Ilona
Ich find’ ihr Rezept ganz tadellos,
mir wird so wunderbar …
Ich komme in Schwung,
werd’ wieder jung,
als wär ich achtzen Jahr!
I find the formula quite faultless;
I feel so wonderful …
I’m getting into the swing,
becoming young again,
as if I were eighteen!
Dragotin
Das wirkt ja brillant, sehr interessant,
boch beweisen Sie’s hier.
Its effect is brilliant, very interesting,
but prove it here.
Ilona
Sie haben ganz Recht,
das wär nicht schlecht,
Wohlan denn, befehlen Sie mir!
You’re entirely right,
that wouldn’t be bad;
well then, instruct me!
Dragotin
So fassen Sie mich, bitte sehr!
So um die Taille ungefähr!
Jehzt hören Sie, bitte, die Melodei
so lockend, so reissend, so süss,
man labt und man liebt und man tanzt dabeii
als wär’ man im Paradies!
So embrace me, please do!
Around the waist, or thereabouts!
Now hear, please, the melody,
so alluring, so captivating, so sweet,
one lives and loves and dances to it
as if one were in paradise!
Ilona
Man fliegt durch die Welt im Dreivierteltakt
Wird selig nach dieser Façon.
One flies through the world in three-four time,
one knows true bliss in this way.
Dragotin
Und hat uns der walzer
Erst recht gepackt,
Dan tanzt man der Alter davon!
And once the waltz
has us in its grip,
then one dances old age away!
Both
Nur die Liebe macht uns jung,
nur die Liebe gibt uns Schwung,
darum lieb’, so land Du lebst,
su den Göttern Du Dich hebst!
Auf der Liebe süsser Spur
Blüht die ew’ge jugend nur,
Durch die selig uns machende,
sorgen verlachende Liebeslust!
Only love makes us young,
only love gives us swing,
so love as long as you live,
and you’ll live like the gods on high!
In sweet pursuit of love
eternal youth alone blossoms,
through love’s joy, bringing us bliss,
laughing at cares and worries!
14
Texts and translations
Weisst Du es noch
Where are they now
Edwin
Weisst Du es noch?
Denkst Du auch manchmal der Stunden.
Süss war der Rausch,
Der uns im Taumel umfing!
Weisst Du es noch,
Was wir beseligt empfunden?
Weisst Du es noch?
Weisst Du es noch?
War auch nur flüchtig der Traum.
Schön war er doch!
Where are they now,
Words so devotedly spoken
Gone like a dream,
Gone with the dawning of day.
Where are they now,
Vows which could never be broken?
Where are they now?
Where are they now?
Where are the love and the hope?
Where are they now?
Kaum gefunden, kaum erkoren
Schon vergessen, schon verloren,
Und ein Gatte nennt dich sein!
Promises which none could sever,
Now so soon they’re gone forever,
And a husband’s at your side!
Sylvia
Andre Menschen, andre Städtchen,
Andre Liebe, andre Mädchen,
Und ein Bräutchen wunderfein.
Other eyes so sweetly smiling,
Soft embraces, words beguiling,
Edwin and his lovely bride!
Edwin
Alles Glück, das wir besessen,
Du setztest leichthin es aufs Spiel
Ich liebte dich so-unermessen!
Ach, zu viel! Ach, so viel zu viel!
How could you destroy that magic,
Destroy our own enchanted spell?
The love I felt for you no words could ever tell,
None could ever tell.
Both
Von dem Glück, das wir erstrebten,
Verbleibt uns die Erinnerung kaum,
Und alles, was wir einst erlebten,
War ein Traum, war nur ein Traum!
And yet of such a tender passion
The memory alone is left;
And everything we once experienced,
Was a dream, was only a dream!
Sylvia
Weisst Du es noch?
Denkst du auch manchmal der Stunden
Süss war der Rausch,
Der uns im Taumel umfing!
Weisst du es noch,
Was wir beseligt empfunden?
Where are they now?
Two wounded hearts of
all their cherished dreams bereft,
Ever bereft.
Where are they now,
Words so devotedly spoken?
Both
Weisst du es noch?
Weisst du es noch?
Where are they now?
Where are they now?
15
Texts and translations
War auch nur flüchtig der Traum,
Schön war er doch.
Where are the love and the hope?
Where are they now?
Sylvia
So ein lustiger Roman geht vorüber!
Und man stirbt nicht gleich daran,
Nein, mein Lieber!
So ein lustiger Roman
Ist zum Lachen!
Ja, da kann man
Nichts mehr machen!
Lalalalalala
‘s ist zum Lachen!
Lalalalalala
Nichts zu machen!
Just a fairy-tale romance!
How confusing,
Just a momentary fling,
How amusing!
Just a comic episode,
Simply splendid,
So let’s laugh now it has ended!
La la la la la la la.
Simply splendid,
La la la la la la la.
Now it’s ended.
Texts and translations reproduced with kind permission of
www.simonkeenlyside.info
16
About the performers
Angelika Kirchschlager
mezzo-soprano
Marc Minkowski studied
conducting in the USA, going
on to found Les Musiciens du
Louvre aged just 20. The
ensemble initially specialised
in French Baroque music, but
today it covers a much
broader swathe of repertoire
and has, since 1996, been
based in Grenoble.
Marc Minkowski is particularly
active in the opera house, performing Mozart for the
Opéra de Paris, in Madrid, and at festivals in Salzburg,
Tokyo and Toronto. He has also conducted Les contes
d’Hoffmann (Lausanne and Lyon), Manon (Monte
Carlo), Carmen (Paris and Bremen) and Pelléas et
Mélisande (Leipzig and Paris). He has championed
lesser-known works, too, such as Boïeldieu’s La dame
blanche (Paris), Auber’s Le domino noir (Venice) and
Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable (Berlin). Forthcoming
seasons will see appearances with Opéra de
Paris, Zurich Opera, Opéra-Comique and the
Netherlands Opera.
With Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble he has toured
Europe presenting Haydn’s ‘London’ Symphonies, and
South America with Mozart’s last two symphonies. As
well as the Baroque, his repertoire includes the music of
Beethoven, Berlioz, Bizet, Brahms, Chausson, Debussy,
Fauré, Franck, Mendelssohn, Poulenc, Roussel and
Schubert. This season he will conduct Les Musiciens du
Louvre-Grenoble in works by Berlioz, Wagner and
Stravinsky as well as marking the anniversaries of
Purcell, Handel and Haydn in 2009, notably with a
series of Haydn symphonies at the Salzburg Festival.
This season also takes Marc Minkowski to the opera
houses of La Monnaie and Zurich, and he will guest
conduct the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the
Spanish National Orchestra. In March 2008 he became
Music Director of Sinfonia Varsovia.
His discography ranges from Rameau to Offenbach and
Handel to Bizet. His most recent recording, Bach’s Mass
in B minor, is due for release later this season.
Lukas Beck
Marc Minkowski
conductor
Salzburg-born Angelika
Kirchschlager divides her time
between the opera house and
the concert hall, appearing in
Europe, North America and
the Far East. In the opera
house she is particularly
acclaimed for her readings of
Mozart and Strauss, though
her repertoire also includes
major roles in works ranging
from Handel, via Offenbach
and Debussy, to Nicholas Maw.
As a recitalist, Angelika Kirchschlager’s repertoire
includes works by Bach, Berlioz, Brahms, Debussy,
Korngold, Mahler, Mendelssohn, Ravel, Rossini,
Schubert, Schumann, Weill and Wolf.
Earlier this year she performed at festivals in Istanbul,
Ravenna, Verbier, Grafenegg, Schwarzenberg, Weimar
and at the BBC Proms. She began this season singing the
title-role in Handel’s Ariodante at the Theater an der
Wien, followed by a Wigmore Hall recital, and, with the
Vienna State Opera, performances of Richard Strauss’s
Capriccio and a tour of Japan in Così fan tutte. Next
month she will appear as Hänsel in a new production of
Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel for the Royal Opera,
Covent Garden, while the new year includes a recital
tour with Yuri Bashmet and Jean-Yves Thibaudet, her
role-debut in Carmen at the Deutsche Oper, recitals with
Helmut Deutsch and performances of Weill’s Seven
Deadly Sins with the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir Simon
Rattle at the Salzburg Easter Festival.
Angelika Kirchschlager’s recordings include an operetta
album with Simon Keenlyside, from which many pieces
can be heard this evening, as well as discs of arias by
Handel and Bach, Lieder by Schumann, Loewe, Gustav
and Alma Mahler and Korngold, a disc of lullabies, The
Marriage of Figaro, conducted by René Jacobs, and
Der Rosenkavalier with Semyon Bychkov. She has won
three ECHO Klassik awards and a Grammy.
Last June the Austrian government awarded her the
prestigious title of Kammersängerin.
17
About the performers
Uwe Arens
Simon Keenlyside
baritone
Simon Keenlyside studied
zoology at Cambridge
University and singing at the
Royal Northern College of
Music. On the opera stage he
has built up close associations
with La Scala Milan, the
Metropolitan Opera, New
York, the Vienna State Opera,
the Opéra de Paris and the
Royal Opera, Covent Garden.
His operatic roles include Don
Giovanni, Count Almaviva, Hamlet, Pelléas, Posa,
Macbeth, Orfeo, Papageno, Wozzeck, Billy Budd,
Eugene Onegin and Wolfram, as well as Prospero in the
world premiere of Thomas Adès’s The Tempest and
Winston in the world premiere of Lorin Maazel’s 1984.
Among the orchestras with which he has appeared
are the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Berlin,
Czech and Vienna Philharmonic orchestras, Gustav
Mahler Youth Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, City
of Birmingham and London Symphony orchestras and
the Philharmonia Orchestra.
In recital, he has appeared in New York, San Francisco,
Lisbon, Geneva, Moscow, Paris, Amsterdam, Milan,
Rome, Brussels, London and Vienna, as well as at the
Edinburgh International, Aldeburgh, Salzburg, Munich
and Schwarzenberg Schubertiade festivals. He sang in
Trisha Brown’s choreographed Winterreise at the
Holland, Mostly Mozart (New York), Lucerne and
Melbourne festivals, as well as at the Barbican and at
La Monnaie, Brussels.
His discography includes recitals of Schubert, Schumann
and Richard Strauss, Mahler’s Lieder aus ‘Des Knaben
Wunderhorn’, the title-roles in Don Giovanni and Billy
Budd as well as The Magic Flute, The Marriage of
Figaro and La bohème, and an operetta disc with
Angelika Kirchschlager. In 2007 he received an ECHO
Klassik award for male singer of the year.
18
Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble
Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble was founded in 1982
by Marc Minkowski and has been closely associated
with the revival of Baroque music in France and with the
interpretation of music on original instruments. The
orchestra made its reputation via the music of Handel,
Purcell, Rameau, Haydn and Mozart, among others. In
recent years the orchestra has increasingly explored the
music of the 19th century and beyond, notably Berlioz,
Offenbach, Bizet and Fauré.
Opera is also a key part of the orchestra’s activities,
ranging from Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppaea,
Gluck’s Armide and Iphigénie en Tauride, via Mozart’s
The Magic Flute, The Abduction from the Seraglio and
Mitridate to Bizet’s Carmen.
The orchestra has toured to Eastern Europe, Asia and
South America.
In 2005 Marc Minkowski created the Atelier des
Musiciens du Louvre, an outreach programme which,
among other activities, takes on many pedagogical
projects and organises concerts designed for younger
audiences.
This season the orchestra will participate in a new
production of Wagner’s Die Feen at the Châtelet in Paris,
as well as performing Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky both in
France and abroad.
The orchestra has made many recordings, most recently
a disc of Bizet, while Bach’s B minor Mass is due for
release later this season. The orchestra has also
recorded Mozart’s last two symphonies, and appeared
on Cecilia Bartoli’s album, Opera proibita, and
Offenbach romantique, with cellist Jérôme Pernoo.
Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble receives financial support
from the City of Grenoble, the Conseil général de l’Isère, the
Région Rhône-Alpes, and the French Ministry of Culture and
Communication (DRAC Rhône-Alpes).
Orchestra list
Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble
Violin I
Thibault Noally
Igor Karsko
Hervé Walczak
Jane Piper
Geneviève Staley-Bois
Claire Sottovia
Bérénice Lavigne
Heide Sibley
Alexandrine Caravassilis
Julien Vanhoutte
Violin II
Nicolas Mazzoleni
Mario Konaka
Paula Waisman
Alexandra
Delcroix-Vulcan
Laurent Lagresle
Caroline Lambelé
Karel Ingelaere
Simon Dariel
Viola
Nadine Davin
Martine Schnorhk
Aimée Versloot
Laurent Gaspar
Cécile Brossard
Cello
Eleonore Willi
Pascal Gessi
Aude Vanackère
Elisa Joglar
Patrick Langot
Double Bass
Christian Horn
Clotilde Guyon
André Fournier
Flute
Florian Cousin
Jean Brégnac
Oboe
Emmanuel Laporte
Stefaan Verdegem
Clarinet
Julien Chabod
François Miquel
Horn
Takénori Nemoto
Yannick Maillet
Jean-Emmanuel Prou
Camille Lebrequier
Music Director
Marc Minkowski
Assistant Conductor
Benjamin Levy
Trumpet
Jean-Baptiste Lapierre
Serge Tizac
Trombone
Yvelise Girard
Nicolas Grassard
Jean-Christophe Beaudon
Timpani
Sylvain Bertrand
Percussion
Camille Baslé
David Dewaste
Eriko Minami
Harp
Aurélie Saraf
Bassoon
Nicolas André
Evolène Kiener
Programme produced by Harriet Smith; printed by Sharp Print Limited;
advertising by Cabbell (tel. 020 8971 8450)
Please make sure that all digital watch alarms and mobile phones are switched
off during the performance. In accordance with the requirements of the licensing
authority, sitting or standing in any gangway is not permitted. Smoking is not
permitted anywhere on the Barbican premises. No eating or drinking is allowed
in the auditorium. No cameras, tape recorders or any other recording equipment
may be taken into the hall.
Barbican Centre
Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS
Administration 020 7638 4141
Box Office 020 7638 8891
Great Performers Last-Minute Concert
Information Hotline 0845 120 7505
www.barbican.org.uk
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