Search - Alexander von Zemlinsky, Gerd Albrecht, Hamburg State Philharmonic Orchestra :: Zemlinsky: Der König Kandaules

Zemlinsky's disturbing, haunting swansong...

Eric D. Anderson | South Bend, IN United States | 01/20/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"As great as this opera is, the story of how it finally came to the stage is nearly as fascintating. Fleeing Nazi persection, which had already driven him from Berlin, Zemlinsky left Vienna for America, with the short score and partial orchestration of "Kandaules" in tow. He hoped to finish it in America, and get it produced at the Metropolitan Opera, where one of his former students, Artur Bodansky, was a conductor. But when he showed him the score, Bodansky thought a nude scene in the second act too racy for the Met, and advised Zemlinsky to try something else. Zemlinsky started from scratch, with a new opera on the subject of Circe. But his health was failing, and he died before finishing it. The handwritten pages of "Konig Kandaules" sat untouched for half a century, when it was reassembled by Zemlinsky biographer and musicologist Antony Beaumont. With the blessing of Zemlinsky's widow, Beaumont finished the orchestration of the score, and it was produced for the first time in 1996, and since then has had quite a successful career, with several well received productions.The opera is both theatrically powerful, and really disturbing--far more so that all of Schreker's harlots and rapists. The reason is because we can see ourselves, and our own excesses in Kandaules's characters. The themes could hardly be more applicable to our own time and society. King Kandaules is genuinely well meaning in his generosity, but he has no moral center, and doesn't know the meaning of limits. Gyges, who is really the protagonist, is uncultured and maybe a little inflexible, but he has a conscience, something Kandaules admires all the more because he has none himself. In the end, Gyges kills Kandaules, not because he wants Kandaules's things, he does it only because he must to avoid his own death, and he feel terrible about it, because he still regards Kandaules as his friend and benefactor. Yet, because of his friend's murder, Gyges becomes the King of Lydia. The music moves back in a more romantic direction, after the more spare style of "Der Kreidekreis", yet it still maintains an unsettled harmonic vocabulary that is most apt to the subject matter, and while I personally prefer the lusher approach of his middle career, I still find "Der Konig Kandaules" spellbinding."