Weber’s Der Freischütz Insula orchestra Monday 4 November 2019 7.00pm, Hall Weber Der Freischütz (concert performance) There will be one interval of 20 minutes between Act 2 and Act 3 Stanislas de Barbeyrac Max Johanni van Oostrum Agathe Chiara Skerath Ännchen Vladimir Baykov Kaspar Christian Immler Hermit/Voice of Samiel Thorsten Grümbel Kuno Samuel Hasselhorn Ottokar Anas Séguin Kilian Clément Dazin Samiel Olivier Borde Adrien La Marca solo viola accentus Insula orchestra Laurence Equilbey conductor Olivier Fredj spatial installation Siegrid Petit-Imbert costumes Part of Barbican Presents 2019–20 Please do ... Turn off watch alarms and phones during the performance. Please don’t ... Take photos or make recordings during the performance. Use a hearing aid? Please use our induction loop – just switch your hearing aid to T setting on entering the hall. The City of London Corporation Programme produced by Harriet Smith; is the founder and advertising by Cabbell (tel 020 3603 7930) principal funder of the Barbican Centre Welcome A warm welcome to tonight’s performance supernatural, magical element of Weber’s of Weber’s groundbreaking and brilliantly masterpiece is very much to the fore, even original opera Der Freischütz – to some the in tonight’s concert performance. And while earliest true example of German Romantic that may be most evident in the famous opera. Wolf’s Glen scene, in which the composer conjures the most extraordinarily dark A wonderful solo cast joins the choir colours – even foreshadowing Wagner – accentus and Insula orchestra, conducted just as potent is the interaction between by Laurence Equilbey. Max and his beloved Agathe, sung this evening by Stanislas de Barbeyrac and This is part of an extended tour of Der Johanni van Oostrum. Freischütz given by the musicians and next year they’re set to record it. As ever, It promises to be a wonderful evening. Equilbey aims to offer a fresh perspective I hope you enjoy it. on a well-known masterpiece, and the Huw Humphreys, Head of Music, Barbican 2 Der Freischütz: synopsis Synopsis Synopsis thunder and lightning and supernatural horrors Act 1 shrieking and howling. They fall unconscious The villagers hail the success of the well-heeled as the clock strikes one and calm returns. peasant Kilian in a shooting competition and mock the failure of assistant forester Max. The two men almost come to blows but are separated interval 20 minutes by Kuno, the head forester. When Kaspar (Max’s jealous colleague, who has sold his soul to Samiel, the ‘Black Huntsman’) suggests that Max’s Act 3 gun is cursed and he needs help from the dark A short entr’acte with hunting-horn calls heralds powers Kuno reproves him and reminds Max the arrival of Max who has been shooting like that if he fails in the shooting competition the next a true professional. He has just one magic day he will forfeit his chance of marrying Kuno’s bullet left. It is the Freikugel that belongs to daughter Agathe and, in time, of becoming Samiel and which is destined for his victim. Head Forester. After a trio (‘Oh, diese Sonne’) and a hunting chorus the villagers depart. Agathe is in her wedding dress. She puts her trust in a benign God (‘Und ob die Wolke’). She Max ponders his bad luck but is persuaded by recounts a nightmare in which she was a white Kaspar to drink with him. Having been handed dove shot by Max which transformed itself into one of Kaspar’s magic bullets (eine Freikugel), a bleeding black bird when it fell at her feet. Max shoots a bird from the sky at an impossible Ännchen tries to comfort her (‘Einst träumte’) distance. Kaspar suggests that if Max will join and her bridesmaids arrive and sing a folk him at the Wolf’s Glen at midnight they can song (‘Wir winden dir den Jungfernkranz’). cast seven more bullets. His plan is to offer Max The ancestor’s picture has fallen from the instead of himself as a victim to the evil Samiel. wall again and when Ännchen opens a box As Max leaves, Kaspar relishes the young man’s she has brought they find a funeral wreath. A coming damnation (‘Schweig, schweig’). new chaplet is quickly made from roses given to Agathe by the Hermit Then the huntsmen’s chorus crashes in (‘Was gleich wohl auf Erden’). Act 2 Just as Max has fired the magic bullet, a picture Prince Ottokar and his followers are ready of one of Kuno’s ancestors has fallen from to watch the shooting contest. Kuno insists the wall and injured Agathe. Her companion that it should take place before his daughter Ännchen is rehanging it (Duet: ‘Schelm, halt’ arrives. And the Prince chooses a white dove fest!’). After an early morning visit to the local as the target. As Max takes aim Agathe runs Hermit Agathe is in a pensive mood (‘Wie nahte in, demanding that he stop. The Hermit chases mir der Schlummer … Leise, leise’). She is cheered the dove away to another tree where Kaspar is by Max’s arrival but anxious when he tells her hiding. Max shoots. It is Samiel’s bullet and both that he must collect a dead stag from near the Agathe and Kaspar fall to the ground. Agathe is Wolf’s Glen (Trio: ‘Wie? Was? Entsetzen!’). unhurt but Kaspar is mortally wounded. Samiel appears to collect his reward as the dying man As midnight strikes in the distance Kaspar curses heaven and hell. Max now confesses what summons up Samiel in the Wolf’s Glen. Kaspar has happened and the Prince banishes him. will be reprieved for another three years if he However, the Hermit intercedes and his sentence can find someone to take his place. A terrified is commuted to a probationary year after which Max arrives, shocked by visions of his dead Ottokar himself will officiate at the wedding mother and Agathe. He and Kaspar begin to of Max and Agathe. The opera concludes cast the bullets while all round them there is with everyone celebrating God’s mercy. 3 Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826) Der Freischütz (1817–20) No Weber, no Wagner? Perhaps. Like Wagner could sing a better aria than a German after him Weber worked tirelessly through his prima donna!) Unsurprisingly then, the opera short life to create German operas. He too was not commissioned by Saxony but by subscribed to the ideal Gesamtkunstwerk in which Berlin for performance in the newly rebuilt music, poetry, dance and the visual style of a Schauspielhaus, and for a city that was much production all blended harmoniously into one. more interested in new cultural opportunities than He understood the power of musical leitmotifs. the deeply conservative Kingdom of Saxony. And surely the Wolf’s Glen where Max is egged on to forge the magic bullets is just a step away This story of the young ranger who allies from the cave in Siegfried where Fafner guards himself to demonic forces to make the magic the ill-gotten gains of the Nibelung. More than bullets that will allow him to win the hand of that, Alberich’s theft of the gold from its home the woman he loves in a shooting competition at the bottom of the Rhine at the beginning of would have been familiar to many Germans. The Ring is just as much a sin against nature as Weber and his contemporaries had read it in the Kaspar and Max’s night in the Wolf’s Glen. Gespensterbuch, five volumes of old German folk stories collected and rewritten by Johann August Wagner’s debt to Weber is clear, but too often Apel and Friedrich Laun and published between the earlier composer has been cast as a John 1811 and 1815. Der Freischütz had already the Baptist figure heralding the achievements of been extracted from the collection and turned the Bayreuth sorcerer. However, that is to look into a stage work with music on three previous through the German cultural telescope the wrong occasions and Weber’s close contemporary Louis way. Weber never needs to lean on Wagner. With Spohr only relinquished his plans for an opera Der Freischütz he creates one of the greatest of when he discovered that Weber and his librettist all German Romantic operas and a work that Johann Friedrich Kind were already at work on it. crystallises the cultural, political and philosophical concerns of a German generation who came to It took Weber just over 10 weeks to complete his maturity in the years after Bonaparte’s political score, making changes to Kind’s libretto as he experiments with their territories had ended went. And on 13 May 1820 he wrote: ‘Overture with his exile to St Helena and the restoration to Die Jägersbraut finished and with it the whole of the old European autocracies. It is no opera. God be praised and to him all honour.’ accident that Der Freischütz is set in the period At this stage the piece was called The Hunter’s of the Thirty Years War, that earlier disaster for Bride, which suggests that Agathe was more the German people in which so much of the important than the dark forces that threaten her country was devastated by foreign incursions. ordered rural community with its peasants and huntsmen presided over by a benign Prince. Weber began work in earnest on the history of Max and Agathe in 1819 in Dresden where The revised title, Der Freischütz, throws the he had been hired to create German opera emphasis back on Max and also on Kaspar, who to rival the Saxon taste for Italian works.