Most people (at least those who are familiar with Spanish literature) are well familiar with Bodas de sangre (Blood Wedding) (1932) as the first of the trilogy plays by Frederico Garcia Lorca (the others being Yerma, and The House of Bernarda Alba). It is an intensely stylistically symbolic play that uses surreality to explore aspects of human nature and social interaction. Enrique Beck’s German translation of the play was transformed into the opera Bluthochzeit by Wolfgang Fortner in 1956. It follows the play pretty closely.
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The Story:
The opera opens with the Groom successfully coaxing the permission to marry his beloved (the Bride) from his reluctant Mother, who finally yields out of her wish to have grandchildren. When the Mother later learns from a neighbor that the Bride’s ex-boyfriend is Leonardo, who is related to the murderer of her husband and her other son, she is irritated and resolves to pay the Bride a visit. Meanwhile Leonardo, who is by now unhappily married and with a child, flies into a rage when he is told by a village girl of the impending wedding between the Bride and the Groom (what can I say? These folks are an irrational bunch!). The Mother then takes the Groom to pay a visit to the Bride and her Father at their house, where the older two find that they both are tired and would like their children married to bear them grandchildren.
As the Father sees the visitors out, the Bride’s maid informs her mistress that Leonardo has taken to stalking her and watching her window at night. So when Leonardo shows up that evening the two supposedly ex-lovers have an uncomfortable argument... And, as only uncomfortable arguments between ex-lovers can do, they find themselves not so out of love at all! Leonardo is sent away by the servant before the guests start arriving for the wedding. The romantically schizophrenic Bride pleas with the Groom to protect her and the wedding goes off as Leonardo and his Wife get into a short spat.
It seems all had gone well until the wedding party return to the Bride’s house looking to launch into the traditional festive wedding dance only to find that the Bride had ran off with Leonardo. The insanely enraged Groom runs off with murder in mind as the distraught Mother orders the entire wedding party to go after him into the forest.
That same evening the Moon rises sinisterly over the woods, venting his lust for human blood to avenge mankind for pulling down their blinds at night to keep his light out of their homes. The bloody moon’s malice finds a very receptive pair of ears in Death, personified in the form of a beggar, who collaborates with the aid of his light to ensure that the Groom and Leonardo would find each other. Tragedy and bad karma... The play doesn't end properly and neither does the opera. But if you have read Lorca then you know that how it ends really doesn't matter nearly as much as how (or what makes) it goes in the story.
Being well aware that Lorca’s play is a lyric tragedy rich in symbolism and mysticism, Fortner’s musical translation of it is remarkably vivid and surreal. Various parts of the music actually sound deceptively melodic even though it really isn’t... It’s 12 tone music in the style of Schoenberg’s developing variation principle. I don’t know how he managed, but Fortner even succeeded in giving the thing a tint of Spanish country side. There is no ‘song’ in this opera as the whole thing is declaimed (well... most of it, anyhow, as there are some spoken parts breaking the declamation up in ways that adds to the symbolisms in the story and the music much the way parmesan cheese adds extra bits of happiness to slices of hot pizza). The orchestra is quite large, but it is mostly adeptly and sparingly used. Even though you never see the tragedy on the stage, you can hear it approaches, arrives, and digests its victims. I'm not sure that I like the whole of it much, but many parts of it, especially in the duets and ensembles, are quite hard to get rid of once you've got them lodged in your ears.
CAST:
The mother ::: Martha Mödl (mezzo-soprano)
The Groom (her son) ::: Johannes Grossmann (speaking part)
The bride ::: Anny Schlemm (mezzo-soprano)
The maid ::: Margarethe Bence (contralto)
Leonardo ::: Hans-Günter Nöcker (baritone)
Leonardo’s wife ::: Hetty Plümacher (contralto)
Leonardo’s mother-in-law ::: Paula Brivkalne (contralto)
The beggar (Death) ::: Res Fischer (mezzo-soprano)
The moon ::: Hans-Ulrich Mielsch (tenor)
Ferdinand Leitner/ Orchester und Chor der Württembergischen Staatsoper Stuttgart
Directed by Günter Rennert
This version captures a live performance of this opera from the Württembergischen Staatsoper Stuttgart in black and white. The video and audio quality is pretty good, considering that this was taped in 1964. Günther Rennert's staging is minimalistic, traditional (using period costume), and meaningfully static; leaning heavily on the cast of singing actors to deliver the drama in their speech acting.
This show does strike me more as theater than a real opera, and the cast is nothing short of superbe. Dominating every scene she is in no matter how little she moves is the Mother, Martha Mödl, the lving model of understatedly passionate theater actress who can cause the temperature in your living room to drop 10F from a mere glance of her eyes. Hers is a strangely rich voice that fascinates you with its weird combination of hoarseness and huskiness... The top can get pretty shaky, but the rest is solid and it carries somehow, shifting its shades like a tree quaking off its rustling leaves as it sways in the malicious musical wind of ill omens and lingering resentment.
Equally impressive even with considerably less stage time is Res Fischer as Death disguised as the Beggar. I was getting rather annoyed with Hans-Ulrich Mielsch's lack of presence as the Moon when Fischer's Death appears on the stage and makes my skin crawl even before she had uttered her first note. To be fair, Mielsch has a fine voice and probably wouldn't come out as a boring singing plank had he not have to share the stage with this very incarnation of murderous evil that is Res Fischer. And it also doesn't help that she has this huge true dramatic contralto voice to add to her tremendous stage presence (the gals really has a very dementor-ish way of sapping all hope and happiness right out of the air in your living room!). When this Death pays special attention to the girl in the subsequent scene in the church courtyard, you just know that the kid's days are numbered.
In the company of the likes of Mödl and Fischer, it is a tall order to hold your own place on the stage, but that is just what Anny Schlemm does as the runaway Bride. Her voice (especially the top of it) doesn't sit all that pacibly well with my ear at first, but it gets better as the show progresses. Her transformation from the content to be married young woman to the poster child of fallen woman (with three wrecked families to her name) is impressively convincing, and she copes beautifully with Fortner's occasionally vocally obnoxious music. Margarethe Bence is very effective as the Maid who is, in turn, off-putting and yet quite loveable (especially when she dances).
The tall baritone Hans-Günter Nöcker is physically imposing as Leonardo, whose acting is at times marred by frequent sneak peeks at the conductor for cues. Johannes Grossmann's the Groom is so affable and inflappably optimistic that it makes his anger at the Bride's betrayal effectively tragic even before the real tragedy takes place. Everyone is kept together well by Maestro Ferdinand Leitner in the orchestra pit.
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I'm not a big fan of 12-tone music and declamatory opera, and yet I still find this performance of Fortner's Bluthochzeit a strangely entrancing experience. However, being able to understand the German lyric is imperative to your enjoyment of this work since there is no subtitle. Even if you know the original story by Lorca, that won't help you much since Fortner's music isn't engaging in and of itself. If you are new to the opera... well... I would only recommend it if you are both a German speaker and a lover of surreal theater.