It is late, so I won't go on long... a really excellent, deeply passionate performance of the Hindemith's opera Mathis der Maler here in Zürich. Thomas Hampson as Mathias Grünewald, and Gatti conducting in his last season before leaving, were especially good; but everyone was excellent.
For some reason I'd recalled hearing a recording of the entire opera years ago as a disappointment – I remembered lots of aimless recitative; but my memory must be hugely off, or I'm thinking of something else entirely. The opera is in strongly architectural scenes, more symphonic than operatic to be honest – you always know where all of the themes and counterpount are going. And such intensity – even the passages that are familiar from endless performances of the orchestral suite brought tears to my eyes.
Hindemith wrote his own libretto – but it's surprisingly successful: if it has a flaw, it is that the last three scenes pile up one or two too many 'final' gestures – a more experienced writer with more stagecraft would have combined a couple of them, so that the whole came into more definite focus. Probably Hindemith was feeling the sheer generalized panic of 1938 in Mitteleuropa – the opera certainly ties together all sorts of sharply painful references (book burning, ideological revolts and primitive, enraged street armies, chaotic change, and utter confusion over which way to run to avoid being rolled over by any of several simultaneous disasters).
It is almost a painful relief when, at the end, after so many losses, Mathias drops all the symbols of his life – his paint brushes, easel, even his memories – into a hole in the stage, and slowly walks off into intense light as the orchestra falls silent....
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