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Franz Schreker’s Der ferne Klang Arrives on the American Stage

Jul. 08, 2010

Franz Schreker’s opera, Der ferne Klang, (The Distant Sound), which made waves three years ago when it received its first North American performance as a concert work, will be staged for the first time in North America on July 30 as part of Bard College’s Summerscape festival. Directed by Thaddeus Strassberger and starring Matthias Schultz as Fritz and Yamina Maamar as Grete, the music is performed by the American Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Leon Botstein, the same group that premiered Der ferne Klang at Carnegie Hall in 2007. There will be four performances of the work between July 30 and August 6 in the Sosnoff Theater of Bard College’s Fisher Center.

Schreker, hailed as Germany’s leading composer of opera in the 1920s, fell out of favor because of changing musical tastes – the emotive modes of Wagnerian romanticism and overt expressionism were quickly superseded by the ideologically-driven music of the Second Viennese School – and unjust, fascist government suppression – the popular works of the half-Jewish composer Schreker and others like him were labeled “degenerate music” when the Nazis gained power in the early 1930s. His music has only recently been returning to the concert halls and opera houses of Europe, along with composers like Walter Braunfels and Alexander Zemlinsky, whose oeuvres, because of their Jewish heritage, suffered similar setbacks. Botstein, however, insists that the recovery of Schreker’s work isn’t merely part of some program of musical reparations: "Der ferne Klang is mind-bogglingly good," the maestro insists. "So fresh, and so direct, and so delightful. It requires not a shred of apology."

Der ferne Klang, in fact, is an appropriate ambassador for Schreker’s music; it’s his first major work and the one that propelled Schreker to the forefront of the German opera world. It follows Fritz, a composer who leaves his life – including girlfriend Grete – behind to pursue a distant, ineffable sound, representing artistic perfection, that becomes his obsession, his idée fixe. Meanwhile, Grete, now without her beloved, pursues another kind of dream, an eroticized nightmare, in which she descends into the scandalous Venetian underworld to work at a filthy bordello. The opera tracks their intertwined lives and asks if art–or love–alone is enough for a human soul to find fulfillment.

More on the life and work of Franz Schreker can be found at www.universaledition.com.

Find out more on the performance at www.fishercenter.bard.edu.

Der ferne Klang (1910)
opera in three acts
3.3.3.3-4.3.3.1-2timp.3perc.glock-2hp.cel-str
behind the scene: Venetian music (fl, cl, 2 hn, timp, tamb, hp, 3 mand, 2 guit, str.quin), on the stage: Gypsy music (cl, cimb, str.quin), behind the scene: pno
140’

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