Paul Hindemith wrote eleven operas during his lifetime, and on this week’s Sunday Opera (3/1 3:00 p.m.), we’ll be listening to the one that is probably his most personal work as it reflects his struggles against governmental powers: “Mathis der Maler” (“Matthias the Painter”).
Now, most people know “Mathis der Maler” from the three movement symphony Hindemith wrote as he was beginning to construct the opera, and some of the music from the symphony does appear in an interlude in the opera, but the opera focuses less on St. Anthony and more on the struggle so Matthias Grunewald, a 16th century artist who tries to find his place the turbulent society caused by the German Peasant War during the Protestant Reformation in 1525.This is mirrored in Hindemith’s position in Germany during the rise of the Third Reich.
Matis (Wolfgang Koch) is a noted painter who is in love with Ursula (Manuela Uhl) the daughter of a rich protestant citizen named Riedinger (Franz Gundheber). At a moment when he doubts his vocation as painter, Matis meets Hans Schwalb (Raymond Very) and his daughter Regina (Katerina Tretyakova).Schwalb is the leader of the peasants who are trying to rise from serfdom and economic hardships, and Matis embraces their plight. He helps Schwalb escape the army officer Sylvester von Schaumberg (Oliver Ringelhahn), and approaches the Cardinal of Mainz, Albrecht (Kurt Streit), asking him to not suppress the peasants.
The seven tableaux follow Matis as he works his way through the societal problems that surround him, and he ends up saving a countess (Magdalena Anna Hofmann) who, in turn, saves him, and he adopts Regina after her father is killed.
The final two tableaux take a truly metaphorical turn (as does the final movement of the symphony) and finds Matis as St. Anthony being tempted by various aspects of his world portrayed by the people in his life.
The rest of the cast includes Martin Snell as Pommersfelden as the Catholic Dean of cathedral, Ben Connor as army general Truchsess von Waldburg, and Charles Reid as Wolfgang Capito, Albrecht’s counsellor. They’re joined by Bertrand de Billy leading the Slovak Philharmonic Chorus and the Vienna Philharmonic.
At the end of the opera, we’ll sample two more works of Hindemith: the symphonic version of “Mathis der Maler” and the “marsch” movement from his Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber.
