Pristine Palace and Family: Michael Kupfer-Radecky (Lear), left to right Kiandra Howarth (Regan), Meredith Wohlgemuth (Cordelia) Angela Denoke (Goneril), Picture © Sandra Then
Of the 10 stage works of Aribert Reimann (born 1936), only his Lear has enjoyed wide-reaching international success, possibly because of the familiarity of the subject. I missed the 1978 Munich premiere with its all-star cast, headed by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, but Staatstheater Hannover’s new production, on February 10, was the fifth performance I had attended since the UK premiere in 1989 at English National Opera. Indeed, the opera is enjoying something of a vogue: its admirers now include Calixto Bieito, whose recent production was shared between the Salzburg Festival and Madrid, with Gerald Finley in the title role.
Operatic Lears are nothing new: Verdi famously failed to write one, having commissioned libretti from both Salvatore Cammarano and Antonio Somma. The latter’s version was completed by 1855, but Verdi despaired of casting it, and set the same librettist’s Un ballo in maschera instead.
Over a century later, Fischer-Dieskau attempted to coax a King Lear out of Benjamin Britten, but that too remained a pipe-dream: the composer doubted his music could render the violence and rage of the play more effectively than Shakespeare’s words. After Britten’s death the German baritone turned to Reimann for a Lear in Claus H. Henneberg’s translation. The opera was soon taken up by other leading singers, notably Thomas Stewart, the great Wotan of his day, who headlined the first US production at San Francisco in 1981. More recently Bo Skovhus and Wolfgang Koch, among others, have been unable to resist what must now count as one of opera’s great acting parts.
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